Our time in Ethiopia, Part 2......

After we picked him up on Monday, our week continued to go EXTREMELY well! I never would have thought that I would have the courage to get on a plane for 19 hours! Ever!!! It's amazing what a child will do to you!
We stayed at the New Flower Guest House in which we absolutly loved. Helen and her staff is amazing, and they constantly are doing all they can to make your stay as comfortable with a new child as possible! We are so happy we made the decision to stay at a guest house instead of a hotel. We stayed with some wonderful families from another agency, and we all meshed so well-there were 9 adults, 7 children and lots of staff in about an 1100 sq ft house! I almost felt like we were on an episode of "The Real World, Addis Ababa" : ) Only with less drama! We feel very fortunate to have met them, and are going to make sure we all keep in touch and will watch eachothers children grow up!
Tuesday night while we were there the nannies watched all of our children for 20birr ($2 american) for the night and we all went out to this amazing Ethiopian Restraunt. I didnt care for the injera, Ryan loved it (amazingly so) and he even made us all "proud" and danced with an Ethiopian woman who came over to get him. He can dance better as an Ethiopian, than he can the way we all dance here in the states! : ) I hope to get video of that soon from our friend who was with us, ya'll will die!
The rest of the week, we all really just hung out, did some shopping, played with the kiddos, etc....we got all of RB's paperwork on Thursday and once we had that in hand we were ready to go!!! The anticipation of getting us all home safely to meet you all was killin' us! We had enjoyed our time there, however it was time for us to come home and move onto the next chapter of our lives together. When we left on Friday it was very emotional. The bonds that we formed with the other families was very hard to say goodbye to. Leaving the only place our son had ever known was very hard to let go of. I cried like a baby, and it was really all sinking in that he was really ours and we got to leave his birthcountry with him! WOW! Our cab driver picked us up, we all gave hugs, shared some tears and we were loaded up to head to the airport. I just remember holding RB in the back seat staring out the window, and the images that i saw were the last things that was going to be in my mind of Ethiopia......not exactly what i wanted to picture whenever i thought of where he came from, but I know that in the life of Rylee we were doing the right thing for him and for us! We are the lucky ones, He is the lucky one....we're all blessed to have eachother! God Bless you all and God Bless our family!!!