Day 19-8/22

Its Saturday morning 5:30am, I get out of bed didn’t get any sleep anyway. Heart was racing from 9:30 to 12:30 AM waiting for the final call and then lying awake thinking about the packets the rest of the night. Cheryl and I fold up our beds one last time. The girls, who normally sleep to 8-9am come out of the bed room at 5:45am fully dressed carrying their backpacks. THEIR READY! They won’t even eat breakfast. They watch cartoons and wait. Sasha and Sergey show up with the van right at seven, so we pile in and head to the Embassy. The roads are empty, so it’s a short drive. The Embassy is quite, only a single guard at the security office. I knock on the window, show the guard my passport and he passes me a green folder labeled “STEWART BABIES”. It contains two immigration packets, two Ukrainian passports and instructions for entering the United States of America. I feel as if the world has been lifted off my shoulders. Our drive to the airport is almost surreal, it seemed like it was never going to happen. We arrive at the airport 8:15 and breeze through the check-in / security without any issues. The passport check is a little unsettling as the inspector requests to see our adoption documents and verify we have the immigration packets. After close inspection of all the documents he stamps everyone’s passports and were done. The flight doesn’t even seem that long, the girls play with everything on the plane and are actually pretty good the whole flight. Ira sleeps for a couple or hours, but Ola just can’t get in a comfortable position to sleep. I keep one eye on them the whole time, so sleep is not an option. We land right on time and we are the first off the plane and into the passport/immigration line. The officer looks over the packets, stamps the passports and asks us to step into the immigration office for processing. They call us up right away, the girls sign their names in Russian, Jordan and Sara Stewart. The officer takes the index finger print and says “Welcome to America”. After three hours at the gate we board the plane for Denver, the girls are exhausted it’s 4 AM Kiev time. They sleep from the time we take off right until we land. No food, no beverages and no playing with everything on the plane. As we get off the plane the girls are already asking for “Mama”. We make our way from the concourse to the main terminal in record time. They see Cyndi as we reach the top of the escalator and run to her with open arms. This part of their journey is over and soon will just be a distant memory in their new lives.