Today was the day we got to see our girls....

July 26...

A day that I will never forget.... it was a great morning.. the sun was beaming, it did not shine a lot as it was rainy season.... and it was FINALY the day that we got to go to the foster home to see our children.

Everyone was SOOOO anxious and well I was in tears on the way to the foster home. Berthe asked us if it felt real but I just had a lump in my throat and could not imagine that the day had come.. it did not feel real yet as I had not held them again yet.... still felt like a dream on the way there.... I was the one that kept getting everyone else emotionnal and crying as I just could not believe it was really happening...

Walking up those front steps of the foster home again is something that I had thought about for the past 5 and some months.... to be there with Pierre, I always wondered what it would feel like... It was a great feeling... I kept holding on to Pierre and saying, we are here.. you are going to see them in a few minutes..... I get tears just writting this and it just can't be explained in words.....

Haregewain came in and said her hellos to everyone and then went on to get the children. Our girls were the first ones brought into the grand room... I bent down and Marika walked slowly to me and gave me a hug and looked at me as if saying "hey its you again...... and then she smiled the cute little smile that I had dreamed of seeing again for sooo long... Karelle went straight to Pierre's arms and we both could not believe how much she had grown since February...They both seemed really content to be in our arms.... Here is the first picture of our family together....



Here is one of my favorite pictures of Pierre and Marika from that day.



After meeting the girls, we were able to bring the outside to play a bit.. we had brought bubbles and that was a big hit with the kids.. Marika loved the bubbles and chased them everywhere in the court yard. Karelle sat with me and played with some toys that we had brought for them and eventually fell asleep in my arms and had her morning nap. It felt soo good to hold the girls again.... hard to explain how that feels.. but it was a great feeling that's for sure...and I had a hard time believing that it was true, that we were really going to come back the next day to bring them with us.

Here are more pictures of that morning...







Before we left that day, we needed to leave some clothes for the girls as this is what they would wear the next day when we came back to pick them up. So all the families decided to try on the clothes on their children to make sure they fit as some had brought more than one outfit... our outfit for Karelle JUST fit, as she had grown a LOT even since our last update.... We had brought each of them a hoodie type sweater.. when Marika saw that it was hers, she wanted to put it on right away.. so daddy put it on. She walked around SOOO proud of her sweater and smilling sooo much, she was soo cute.... This last picture is of her right before we left. She did not want to take the sweater off at all so we left and she still had it on....