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I'm not sure where to start with this one.
I am sitting at my own computer in my own office in my own house. No words I can come up with will describe how great it feels to be safely here with Judy and the kids.
We left London very early this morning (10 hour flight). Judy had a miserable cold / flu in London and I started getting one of my own. We got to the airport ok but the kids were being kids again and messed with us the entire time we were waiting for our flight. I was actually beyond numb at this point. We were sitting in a coffee shop waiting for our flight and one of the kids was punching me in the head. I can't remember which one. It also could have been Judy. I didn't care. I couldn't feel it anyways. I also really enjoyed the strawberry / banana drink that Nikki shared with me, on my lap.
On the plane they weren't too bad for a 10 hour flight. I saw other kids a few rows in front of us who were using all the neighboring seats as a jungle gym.

British Airlines was a great airline to fly. The staff were fantastic and the free drinks on the last leg of the trip was much appreciated. I found my 2 vodka tonics worked beautifully on my mood. We saw about 3 movies during the flight. I stayed up the entire time from London to lessen jet lag when I get home but I'm sure all 4 of us will be dragging for a few days.

I will always remember the sound of the plane hitting DIA because I knew we had made it. We were never really sure until we heard and felt the landing. We knew there was no way the pilot was going to announce "hey everybody, hope you enjoyed the flight, what do say we all lift this baby back in the air and fly to, oh I don't know, how about the Ukraine".
The kids were exhausted upon landing. Nikki didn't wake up untill we had to actually leave the plane. When Donna and Marci met us they gave the kids a stuffed animal, small football and balloon. Alex immediately got excited with the balloon and had a blast. When they walked into the house Alex again got right into the swing of things playing and running around like he had been here all his life. Nikki kind of just wide eyed it for awhile. Then as it approached 10pm it was time for them to go to bed and they obviously wanted none of that but they finally prevailed.

Thanks to Cindy for tipping us to getting to customs asap. We were only 3rd in line and the people there were great. They got our paper work processed very fast. Unfortunately we had to wait for about an hour for our last piece of luggage.

Thanks to Donna and Marci from Angeldance for meeting us at the customs exit. I had been dreaming of the moment we saw them and it finally came true.

Thanks to Dena, Spencer, Tara and Michelle for picking us up. That was when it really hit home for me that we were home, seeing them. We missed them the most.

Before we all went into the house Judy and I had to go in alone and see the cats. There lives will never be the same once the kids get ahold of them. Our cats were actually our children for many years. We were so relieved that they didn't forget us!

A huge thanks to you Sue, for the beautiful quilt you made for Alex! Not to mention everything else you have done for us, taking us to the airport, picking Michelle up at the airport, checking on our cats when we didn't know what was going on, helping Michelle buy the extra bed..... you truly are an angel!

The neighbors put up a big banner over our garage welcoming us home. That was great to see. We missed all of them.

Thx to Judy's co-workers for the welcome sign and great gifts. We were shocked to see Ukrainian wording.... don't know what it says, but we're sure it's all nice stuff!

It is still a bit surreal being here at home. I'm sure its the sleep depravation, stress and 5 weeks of the unknown but it almost feels like we never left. Like it was all a dream (nightmare). Anyway. Thanks again to everyone who read this blog and thanks to the ones who left comments. They were all great to read and it was like a thread to the life we left behind. Thanks very much to Angeldance our agency, thanks to our Ukrainian family Roman and Alex who made all this possible and did the seemingly impossible to get us 2 amazingly healthy beautiful children and were with us every step of the way from landing in Kyiv to leaving Kyiv.

A special thanks to Michelle, Judy's sister who stayed almost the entire time looking after our house and our other children while we were gone. That was a huge potential stress that was lifted from us.

Now comes the fun part. We just hope we can give these two the best life possible. Our jobs are just getting started.

Over and Out.

Cliff, Judy, Nikki and Alex.