Meeting

We slept fairly well on Friday night considering that in less than 24 hours we would FINALLY be meeting the rest of our family. We were in the Marriot in Manila and breakfast was sumptuous to say the least. Yes, we all ate breakfast! It's a good thing we did because we haven't eaten since and it's now 10 pm at night here.

We were ready to go by 9:30 am. The shuttle picked us up for our last flight of this journey -- a flight taking us to the beautiful island of our daughters' birth.

Our seats were together on the plane. We were all running a gamut of emotions. Excited, nervous, wondering...

It was another uneventful flight -- the shortest, yet longest one yet!

Baggage claim was near the exit doors. There they were, outside, just behind the gates, dressed in the pink dresses and hairbands we sent them. Forget the luggage! I wanted to see my babies!!! I controlled myself ;o). We all waved furiously to each other.

Those last few seconds before we got through the doors to finally meet our girls seemed to take forever, but there we were, out in the Philippine heat and humidity hearing the cries of, "Mommy! Daddy!", and getting and giving lots of hugs and kisses.

Yes, there are only two girls in this photo, but our photographer, Bub, was too enthralled with his little sisters to remember to take photos, so we have very few of our actual meeting.

We eventually loaded up and headed to the hotel. There we spent some time getting to know our daughters. If I thought our house wasn't quiet with four children in it, it's never going to be quiet again ;o)! They are bright, funny, beautiful, and busy! We even took them to our hotel room where they were enthralled with the books and activities we brought for them. They don't speak a lot of English, but they understand everything, so we didn't have too much of a problem communicating, and some things are just universal. One of the male members of our family, ahem, broke wind and the girls just burst into laughter! Their laughter is so beautiful to hear!

At 4:30 pm their workers came and took them back to their orphanage. She explained very carefully prior that we would see them again at church so they wouldn't panic. We crashed and slept for four hours. Now it's time to go eat something....

Blessings!