Gotcha Day July 27

Today, Pierre and I got up and could not believe this was it.... we were on our way to pick up our girls and they would be with us forever from this point on! It was a great feeling and I will never forget seeing them in the little outfits that we had brought for them to wear!

We got all our paperwork from H and then took pictures as a family.


Then we all went outside and took lots of pictures with the caregivers. They each took the children that they cared for and you could see that the children loved them! Marika still looks at these pictures and names the caregivers and is all smiles ! I am not posting these as I'm not sure that we are allowed as they were taken at the CAFAC foster home.

We were able to get the picture album that we had sent to the girls back and you could see that they had seen it a lot and loved it. Marika opened it and pointed at me and said Amama (which is mother in Amharic) and then at Pierre and said Ababa (which is father in Amharic). And then she would name herself (mekde was her nickname at the foster home) and Tsega which is Karelle's Ethiopian name. She was very pround to show us the album. When Karelle got a hold of it, she held the first picture to her mouth and gave it a big wet kiss.... It was soo cute...

The girls were excited to come into the taxi with us which we did not expect at all. They were amazed by everthing on the street (looking out the windows)and Marika calls the cars beep beeps and said that the whole drive back to the foster home. She also saw lots of dogs and kept telling us that they were woo shaws (Amharic for dogs).

When we got to the guesthouse, we ate some lunch and put them down for their naps. Everything went really well! Marika was telling us lots of Amharic words and repeating EVERYTHING that we were saying. I have lots of videos of that first afternoon in the guest house and its soo neat as it is memories that we never want to forget. When Karelle woke up, she went to see her and gave her a big hug and kiss and tickled her. This is when we saw Karelle laugh for the first time. She was too cute and you could see loved her sister.

Marika was potty trained and we wondered if she would go into the travel potty that we had brought for her and she had no problem and used it the whole time we were there!

Here are a few pictures of that afternoon as we must stayed at the guesthouse and enjoyed spending the first day with our girls. They kept us entertained and we laughed and played. We then had supper with the other families in the lobby of the guest house.




We figured out very quickly that getting two toddlers to smile at the camera was impossible... then realized that we would be lucky to have them both at least look at the camera at the same time... which was not very often either LOL...

We then had our baths which they both LOVED(I will post about this in another post)and went to bed. They did very well and fell asleep no problem which we were also amazed as we were expecting them to be anxious at least a little.. We had a bassinet for Karelle (which she was WAY too big for) and the didn't have any cribs left that night so they put a mattress on the ground for Marika to sleep on... She rolls a lot during the night so rolled off on blankets that we had put on the ground a few times... and I was scared that Karelle would sit up as she could have crawled out of her bassinet so we didn't sleep that well that night as I kept looking to see if they were ok and putting Marika back on the mattress too.... but they didn't wake up and slept really well until the morning :)I was sure I had taken pictures of that small bassinet but I only took videos of that first night.

Anyways once they were in bed, Pierre and I sat down and talked about the wonderful day that we had just had and how at peace our hearts were that night. It was such a great feeling to go to bed that night with our whole family in the same room.... it was hard to imagine that the day had finally come...