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We arrived at the airport last evening at 8:40pm, expecting that they would arrive at 9:40pm. At 11:00pm they were still on the tarmack waiting for someone to push the plane for take off. At 11:40pm, confirmation they were in the air came. Through all this time the media slowly encrouched. At 12:52am, they arrived on US soil. And from there it gets fuzzy. But this morning, we waiting. We'd hear they had 10 more to go, and it would be an hour and then they'd have 8 more to go. At one point I seriously thought they were doing 2 an hour. But they weren't going that slow, it was more a matter of quantity. The proccessed 81 visa's. 81 kids to fingerprint, photograph, and review the files. They had 7 dedicated immigration reps, and a special staging area set up. And it still took many hours. They then moved us upstairs to a conference room to wait. And brought the kids into the room next to ours. We could hear them singing. It was an amazing moment.
They then called us out a family at a time to get our kids. To be honest, I remember very little, other than seeing them and running to wrap my arms around their little bodies as tight as one can. And then I realized that I was practically a stranger. So I stopped squeezing them. Er was unsure to begin with, but R was all over it. But the end of the hour, Lalan was leading us around and dancing for us.
We will need to domestically adopt them. We don't really know anything else at this point. It will probably involve a adoption/immigration attorney. While humanitarian parole has been granted before, this is the first time it's been applied in this situation.
We are tired. Really, really tired. And we are joyous, and happy. And tired. So I'm off to sleep.