We got her!!

What a crazy 24 hours this has been! The kids were supposed to arrive at 9am on Tuesday, but we got a call just about 8am that the train had been delayed (actually they said canceled first, and my heart about dropped) five hours and now they weren't expected until 1pm. Mom and I decided to nap a little and read, while many of the others went out shopping. Good thing we stayed in the hotel-- the kids actually arrived at 11am, and several of the parents weren't even there to greet them :( We all hung out in the lobby until every baby had a mommy or daddy with them, then split up for some quiet time. The kids all seemed a little stunned at the commotion, and they didn't seem to quite know who we were. Mom, Noelle and I went up to the room and played for a while-- you can see from the first picture that she was all smiles. Then she completely conked out, sleeping for 3 hours. Some more play later in the day, and dinner in the bar with some friends and we were ready for bed again! Noelle slept like a rock, from about 7:30pm to 7:45am-- too bad Mom and I did not sleep as well. This morning, after breakfast, we went to the SOS International Medical clinic. The exam they gave Noelle was brief, but they said all looked good. They took some blood, and those test results will be back tomorrow.. The most interesting thing about the clinic is that we met other families adopting that are not in our group-- one family had actually adopted their daughter from Kyrgystan (I know that's not the right spelling!) but since there is no US consulate there, they had to come to Almaty for processing. After the clinic we came back the hotel and after a little play, Noelle was ready for a nap-- I just hope these good sleep patterns hold when we get home! You will see in the last picture above that Noelle is pretty intrigued by her new manner of dress-- in the hotel room, I took off her heavy tights and just had her pants on-- and she was soooo cute pulling up the legs of her pants to check out her naked little legs! I can guarantee that she never hung out with bare legs in the baby house, so she was completely intrigued. Very funny. And the last two photos are friends of ours-- Holly and her son Foxx and Eileen and her daughter Mariah. It is so great that we are all back here together-- tonight, Holly has proposed a "bath party" to see the kids through their first real bath. We will see what happens!