We're printed!

So we drove down on Monday am (after so NOT making it by 8am) and prayed before, during and after...about getting "let in early." We'd gotten some advice from our kind friends who have been thru this before (thanks Jennifer!!!) to just "go for it," and so we did.....

The whole way there i felt increasingly nauseous......

So, we parked in the parking lot and observed for a minute what was going on. There was a set of glass doors and people were going thru the glass doors, and then a few moments later, emerging and walking back to their cars. We felt discouraged. Watching one couple who looked like they were possibly adopters, I said to B., "hey, ask them what's the deal!"....so he rolled down his window and asked them.

They said, "Oh, you can't take ANYTHING in there with you, so we are taking our stuff back to our cars".....

Aha! So we stashed everything except our appointment letter (dated a bit later in the month) and Photo ID and walked up to the guard, arriving at a moment when we were the only ones in front of him. He looked at us suspiciously and said, "NO CELL PHONES" and we said "WE DON'T HAVE ANYTHING BUT THIS PAPER" and he looked (i promise) a bit disappointed/surprised and inspected our letter, our licenses and....slowly, magically, the strap across the entrance was removed...and...we...were....
INSIDE.

We were given a clipboard and some instructions, waved to sit over there....fill this out, then get in this line....

Watching again, we noted that there were two men taking the info from you,
one
person
ONLY !!
allowed to advance alternately to each desk at a time. I definitely was hoping we would get the friendlier looking guy...... and as his spot opened up, B. waved me ahead to go to him and as I walked up to his desk he chuckled and said to me "Hey, this must be what , like y'all's third or fourth kid??"

It took me a moment to realize that he thought he recognized me, but then I quickly quipped back, "yeah, it's our fourth actually" and he stamped, scrawled and returned my paper to me with a wave to the next section of chairs and a paper scrap with "435" on it... and then took B right away before the next guy (not so friendly looking) had his line open again.....

We sank into the plastic chairs and looked at each other hardly daring to breathe.
We had a number!!!

It then was just a matter of waiting to be called, and "printed," and we were out the grey steele door, which slammed behind us, about an hour later.

One more door entered and exited in this crazy, crazy, process.

As we walked thru this one, I looked ahead to the moment we will step on the plane in Kyiv, the jet way door will close, and we will head back to America with our fourth kid indeed, sir, .....and swallowed hard.

thanks for all prayers for an earlier date!

Us