The comforts of home

Our first family picture:

I am writing this message from the office in our house. Matt and the kids are already in bed. It has been a really long, exhausting 24ish hours. Last night our flight left Ethiopia at 10:50 p.m. We arrived in Amsterdam 7.5 hours after that. Both kids were great on that flight. They slept the entire time. Matt got some good rest as well. I, on the other hand, had a really hard time sleeping with miss Liliana on my lap.

When we get to Amsterdam we had a 4 hour layover. We had a couple of snacks and then went to an indoor play area for kids. Both Michael and Liliana had a great time blowing off some steam before our next flight. After boarding the plane for our flight home, we found out that we were going to have to sit on the plane for 2 hours because there was too much air traffic. We were okay with sitting on the plane vs. in the airport because it was easier to contain the kiddos. We were in the bulk head row, so the kids were able to sit on the floor below our seats with plenty of room to play.

The kids each slept for a couple hours of the flight and then played for the bulk of the flight. We had them each nap for the last hour or so of the flight. It wasn't easy to get them to go to sleep, but we managed. As we were landing, one of the flight attendants told us we had really well behaved kids. I thought that was a very nice compliment considering we've only had them for a week and both kids were very restless for a majority of the flight.

My parents met us at the airport to bring us our car and help us get our luggage home (with the car seats in, it wouldn't all fit!). The kids did not like sitting in their car seats with seat belts at all. Which reminds me - every time we had to put the seat belt on Milkias in the plane, he would cry these silent, sad tears. It was the cutest and the saddest thing I've ever seen. He did the same thing on the car ride home. Liliana, on the other hand, whined about it. When I reached back to touch her she grabbed my hand with her hands and pushed it against her face. After that, she was fine. :)

The kids had a fun time exploring the house, their room, etc. Both of the kids are afraid of Nickel (our cat). Michael is starting to get over that fear, but only if the cat is not looking at him. It's super funny. We had a quick pb&j dinner and put the kids to bed around 6. Matt gave Liliana a bottle and I gave Michael a bath (his fav). He was so excited when he saw a bubbly tub full of water and toys. Which brings me to a list of the comforts of home:

- giving the kids a bath in a bathtub that actually fills up
- brushing teeth with the water from the sink
- putting toilet paper in the toilet

I am so tired I can't think of anything else, but it is good ... oh so good to be home.

I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who helped us this week with our house. It was great knowing that we didn't need to worry about things here. Nickel was very well loved.

With that, I will go to bed at 6:45. In the morning I will clean up the mess of toys downs stairs. The kids were so excited about all their new toys I didn't have the heart to ask them to only take 1 toy out at time.

Many blessings,
Matt and Becca