Home from Haiti..Is this real??

Well...we are home...with our sons. We are happy...we are tired! ;) It was an amazing trip. To see the way God orchestrated the final details was more than we could imagine. My dear friend Ann Marie has been such an encouragement to me the last few months. We spoke and emailed a lot. Our files entered at different times but the last few steps they were together...which is odd for Haiti :). To find out we had the same exact day and time for our Visa appointment was a huge blessing. We met in Miami and sat next to eachother flying into Haiti. That was something we dreamed of, and prayed for!
The day we left for Haiti Todd had to perform with our church group at a Festival in town, which he finished at 2pm...we had to run about 10 blocks to my friends Jen and Jeremy's van and rush to catch our 3:15 flight. We had already gotten our boarding passes that morning...but it was still SO stressful! We got to the airport with less than 50 minutes until our flight left. There was not one person in security and we got in and were even able to grab a bite to eat! Praise God.
So...we flew all night and got into Haiti at about 8 am on Mother's Day. The kids were brought to our hotel about 1 pm. What a gift. They did great! Solomon was very quiet at first but by that evening he had perked up. We had a nice Mother's Day dinner with Todd, Ann Marie and Francesca and our sons!!
Our Visa appointment was for Monday morning at 8 am. We arrived a little after 7 am. There was a very long line of Haitians...maybe 500.. waiting to get into the US Consulate. We were able to move to the front of the line, I am assuming that was because we were Americans and had an appointment.
We went in and met Madame Antoine....the lady I would call daily. She seemed so sweet. She smiled and said "oh, Mrs. Dunn.." she was very familiar with who i was!! Funny!
Then we met with Nancy McCarthy..she was very nice. I asked her if she thought that there could be any problems (meaning, do i need to stress until 2:30 when we would have to go back to get the Visa?). She said that it takes a while to get the appointment because they don't want people to come down and then run into issues, that is why they go over it all ahead of time. Our appointment was done before 8 am...our processor Kiki hadn't even shown up yet. He did meet us as we were going out. He is very nice and we were happy that we got to see him.
We went back to the hotel and then sat by the pool with Todd and Ann Marie and visited. A little later Pierre showed up with the kids birth parents. They stayed more than an hour...maybe 2. We had them tape video messages to the kids, while pierre translated.
Later we went swimming...because we were SOOOOO HOT!!! That was nice. Ann Marie and I went back to our rooms because we were exhausted and then our Todd's (yes, both of our hubby's are named Todd) went to pick up our Visa's!!!!!!
I was so tired but the boys were NOT! I could not get them to sleep!! A little while later Todd came back with the VISAS!!!! Yippppeee
Todd also told me that Pastor J was there to take us to see his orphanage. Pastor J is an awesome man of God in Haiti who helped us with our file when it was in MOI....he runs a orphanage with 50 boys and a school with 500 students. He is opening a medical clinic as well.
We grabbed the boys and off we went. It was a blessing to be able to spend time with him as well as see his ministry in action. When we got there a team from YWAM was there and Pastor J invited us to eat dinner with the team. We were so greatful.
Then we went back to the hotel and Todd and I put the boys to sleep and then packed our stuff!! We couldn't believe we got to take our boys home !!
The next day we were off. The flight from Haiti to Miami Soly slept and Markenley played. Then when we got to Miami we had a 4 hour layover because we heard immigration could take hours. Well...it took us (and Todd and Ann Marie) about 30 minutes!!
We both went to check to see if we could get an earlier flight home. Well...we both did!! It was sad to say goodbye to them!! So, we left at 2:30 Miami time and instead of flying to LA, with a 2 hour layover, we flew straight to SF. That meant we got into SF at 5:30 CA time instead of 10:20. It was a 6 hour flight. The boys did awesome!! We were so proud of them.
Jen picked us up from the airport and we got home and the kids were super excited. They kept hugging me saying "is this real?"
That night was crazy with lots of neighbors and friends coming by. But it was good. Markenley had a blast playing ball with the kids on the lawn. Soly did too.
That night we were going to have the boys sleep in our room but Markenley wanted to sleep in his new bed! TJ ended up sleeping with him part of the night. Soly slept with us.
I will post more about the adjustment later...must go to sleep!!
love you all!
Renee