We made it home!

Sorry I haven't updated this site since we have been home.  It has been really busy around here, obviously.  Sorry to leave those of you hanging that don't have personal contact with our family.

The flights went well.  Dasha was extremely excited to leave Ukraine to go to America.  During our first flight from Kyiv to Amsterdam (just under 3 hours), she was in my lap most of the time looking out the window and just jabbering in Russian.  She was pointing out things and was just as happy as she could be.  She kept repeating "America!" in the middle of sentences that I couldn't understand. 

We made it to Amsterdam and had reservations in the transit hotel inside the airport.  This made it extremely easy.  We had some dinner and went and checked into the hotel.  Dasha of course wanted to watch Tom & Jerry again, so I played it on the computer for her. 

The next morning, we got up and had some McDonalds breakfast, then started walk to our gate.  Really, it was only about 5 minutes to the gate.  We went through checkin and boarded the plane.  On this trip, we had center section seats, so no window seat for us.  Dasha was a trooper on this flight.  She of course got a bit crabby a few times, but no crying or big meltdown.  She was extremely happy to get off the plane in Detroit after about 9 hours on this plane.  We were too! 

We arrived in Detroit, had to pick up our luggage then go through Customs.  The customs officer processed our paperwork then sent us to a "Special" line.  This is where the Immigrations officer goes through the paperwork and stamps Dasha's visa.  It only took a few minutes and her visa was stamped.  When her visa is stamped, that made her a U.S. Citizen right there. 

She was not really happy when she figured out that we were getting into another airplane.  We couldn't explain it to her that this was only a 45 minute flight.  Dasha and Kendra had seats together, and I was a few rows back.  This is the only flight that we didn't have seats together.  No real big deal since it was such a short flight. 

We arrived in Grand Rapids on time.  We were greeted by a rather large family group with camera flashes going off.  Dasha was really excited to say the least.  She had seen pictures of all these folks the whole time we were in Ukraine, so she knew them and wasn't shy at all.  She went right to both grandmas for a big hug and kiss, then I told her to find 'dadushka', or grandpa.  She went right over to Kendra's Dad. 

Just before we left the airport, I was informed that my Dad had a severe stroke on Wednesday, and was in the hospital in Grand Rapids.  This definitely dampened the mood, but we tried to keep upbeat as much as possible.  Dad is still in the Hospital with complete left-side paralysis.  We will probably be moving him later this week to a rehab center for therapy.  Don't know much more at this time.

But, back to the main point of this blog...  We went home, caravan-style.  We had all the family following us home, with the exception of my sister and her youngest.  They were going back to the hospital to be with Dad.  When we got home, Dasha was almost swimming in toys that everyone brought home for her.  She did receive 3 hula-hoops. Must have been the multiple hula-hoop pictures on this site that did that.  But, she uses all 3 of them.  Sometimes all at once!  It was a long and difficult day, but we all made it through fine.

As of now, Dasha is adapting very well.  She is understanding English more than I had ever expected.  She won't speak much of any yet, but is understanding a lot of what we say.  That will take a bit of time.

Thanks for reading this blog.  The surprisingly huge number of hits (almost 17,000 at this time) has pushed me to write.  I will have to edit all this into a book form for Dasha when she gets older.