Planes, shuttle busses, and running through airports.....

The flight from Kiev to Frankfurt finally took off at 10:00 instead of 5:30 am. It was -28C and they couldn't de-ice the plane until the sun rose and it warmed up to -23. It was cold even in the airport and I wore Mark's down coat to be snuggly. We treated ourselves to coffee and cake for breakfast while we waited. Treated is not the word, I should say allowed ourselves to be robbed in exchange for coffee and cake because it cost about $24.



As we waited, the lack of sleep wore on me and my emotions fell apart. All my fears and insecurities swirled in my head like a nightmare. Lack of sleep, high emotions and change also bring out grief feelings so dear Mark had to keep talking me off my emotional cliffs.



I was relieved to be on the plane at 10:00 and tried to sleep a little during the flight. We arrived in Franfurt at 12:10 and our connecting flight home was at 12:25. The Franfurt airport is big and we had to walk down long deserted hallways broken up by those smelly smoking rooms. The hallways twist and turn in ways that didn't make sense intuitively until I saw the airport map and realized it's shaped a little like a tinkertoy.



We missed our flight, but were rebooked on an Air France flight to Paris and then Delta to Atlanta. We rushed back through more elevators,Long empty twisty hallways that look wrong and a shuttle train until we reached security again.



Every connecting flight means going through security twice- once when you get off and then again to get back on. I started to enjoy seeing Mark get flagged for frisking. It happened almost every time to him after we left Atlanta. I only got frisked three times. No one frisks as invasively as the Atlanta people so Mark's 10 frisks < my Atlanta frisk. Anyway we got on the flight. After landing in Paris, we rushed again to get our connecting flight. It was the prettiest airport of our trip.
I wanted to skip out and and go to Disneyland Paris but Mark said no.




By the time we were flying to Atlanta, I was so tired I was almost weeping with exhaustion.

I took my mind off everything by watching a cute movie (the big year) and Mark read one of my books.



He was reading about how if we have hope against hope (no that is not where my other blog's name came from) we learn to persevere though our trials and achieve peace and love. Having hope/ faith/trust when it feels like there is no hope gives us a way to conquer death itself....



All those thoughts are too much for me to even write about with my jet lag and time change but it is a beautiful, and very long book. Every now and then, we'd talk about things he was reading about and I'd feel encouraged.



We eventually landed and got home where Red Cat was crying pitifully. He hates it when we're gone. He cried for over an hour last night and after snuggling with us, started crying again this morning. He seems to be missing Andrew and Hope because he wanders around the house crying.



We'll have about ten days of normal life before flying back to Ukraine, picking up lots of paperwork and passports and getting the kids. It is a beautiful thing to see how the few small seeds of love we've sown in them have already produced such love in return, and have given them such joy and hope. Ruslan/Nicholas (got to start making that switch!) seems to have undiluted optimism and confidence (we love it that we've given him such certainty to have said in court, boldly and with smiles in our direction,"I know they love me very much, and I love them.") Nadia, while clearly hopeful and happy and very hungry for parents' love, is a little scared too. We're looking forward to watching the beautiful transformation continue to unfold, in them and in us!