Home again....and a couple of exciting announcements!

First of all, we made it home. :)  It took another "galactic travel day" to get home - 25 hours of plane travel, an overnight stay in Portland, and a few stops before we made it home Sunday evening about 10 p.m.  As tough as it was to say goodbye to the girls, and leave them - it felt good to FINALLY be home.  Saturday night, we slept great - both of us crashed and slept a ton!  Sunday - the jet lag hit.  We didn't fall asleep until almost 5 a.m. (Monday morning).  Needless to say both of us were kind of worthless yesterday!!  Last night Brandon had an easier time falling asleep than I did, but it was about 3:00 for me - so I'm headed in the right direction!!  Here are a few pictures from our last evening in Krasnoyarsk, and traveling home. :)

Brandon at the pizza restaurant near our apartment.  Delicious pizza!!!  Even if we weren't 100% sure what was going to be on it! :)

 In the little square next to the pizza restaurant.  This was just a couple of blocks from our apartment. 

 Paka Krasnoyarsk!!!  Can't wait to be back!!

 This is Alyonka chocolate.  It's a very popular Russian chocolate.  Alyonka is Emily's nickname. :)  And we think this baby looks an awful lot like her!!!

 Brandon learned the Russian alphabet before we left, and he sounded out the letters on this water and told me it says "Emily" - so of course we had to put the Emily and Alyonka together :)

 After our first flight to Moscow, we had about a 3 hour layover.  I was able to meet my friend Molly and her new son Gus!!  Gus is SO adorable - Molly is equally as adorable - and it was great to meet in person!  Wish we could have chatted longer (we could have since their flight was delayed forever!!)  - but hopefully our paths will cross again at some point!! :)

 After about 12 hours of sleep in Portland - we grabbed some food, and stopped at Ikea before heading south for home. :)  This was a picture of me drinking my first Dr. Pepper in over a week!!  I might go that long without it at home, but I always have the option....it was NO WHERE to be found in Russia!!  That Dr. Pepper never tasted so good! :)

So, we're home now - and trying to get caught back up!!  Doing laundry, cleaning out the fridge, finally getting rid of the last of the donations left over from our garage sale. You know stuff like that! :) 

We do have a couple of exciting announcements though!!  The first is, we had HUGE success with our recent auction on facebook!!  We were thrilled with the response!  Thank you to everyone who donated items for the auction and to everyone who bid!!  We appreciate it so much!  The grand total raised from the auction is: $2765.50!! Wow!! :) 

The other is a REALLY exciting announcement!!  We have been given an extremely generous gift which puts our adoption account at close to complete! (We don't know what the final number will be quite yet, as we can't predict what airfare/food/lodging will cost exactly for our last two trips.) This gift combined with what is currently in our Reece's Rainbow account and what is outstanding still for the auction will bring us very close to being fully funded!! Obviously, we have some ongoing fundraisers, and we will continue to do those. Anything we raise above and beyond what we need in the end, we will use to "pay it forward" and bless other families who are also in the middle of fundraising to bring their children home!

We want to thank each and every one of you who has contributed, helped at our fundraisers, and supported us with your prayers. When we said yes to this journey, we knew it would be an exercise in trust. Trusting God to take care of us, and trusting that we would be able to do this! We couldn't have made it this far without all of your help, no matter how large your contribution, literally each penny has helped us get to this point!! Now, we can focus on the paperwork we need to get done, to get us back to Russia for court, and then bring our girls home!!! Thank you God for your provision!!!!