I want to try to get this all down but am limited on time.

The past 24 hours has been a whirlwind. I’ve got two sick kids now. Hudson=strep. Parker=ear infection. Hudsons perfect attendance dream went right down the toilet after just the 2nd day of school. He came home w/ strep and had to miss school today.

Parker was up all night and after virtually no sleep and a loooong day he was diagnosed w/ yet another ear infection.

BUT the most exciting part of the last 24 hours is that Larissa, our new “daughter” and exchange student from Prattlen, Switzerland arrived today!  With so little sleep last night I woke up with a giant headache and a million things to get done in just 2 hours…because that’s how I roll people. Procrastination.

I popped some Tylonal and after Suzy got her to stay w/ Parker and little strep dude I bolted out the door to pick up a couple final gifts for Larissa before her arrival. I swung by Acadamy to make sure she had a Longhorns tshirt waiting for her. Next stop was James Avery. I wanted to get her something really true to Texas and I loved the idea of starting her a charm bracelet knowing we could add charms to it over the course of the year and when she leaves here next summer she will hopefully have a bracelet full of charms that signify some really outstanding memories here. I picked this Deep in the Heart of Texas charm as her very first.

I rushed home to grab Hudson before we needed to head out to the airport to pick her up. On a whim I decided I should check the status of her flight. Yea, good thing I had that whim….um, her plane was delayed 3 hours. I was so bummed. It had already seemed like I had to wait an eternity for this DAY to get here. 3 hours was going to kill me.

However, it did give me a little time to actually EAT and get a bit of work done while I waited.

I decided since it was practically the end of the school day anyway I would go ahead and get Brooklyn out of school to go along. She was already about to string Hudson up in the middle of the neighborhood and stone him since he was “lucky” enough to get strep throat which consequentially allowed him to be home from school and available to tag along to the airport to pick Larissa up. Brooklyn was thrilled and surprised when we showed up to get her.

Like big giant dorks we totally made a sign for Larissa. the kids fought over who was going to carry it into the airport and hold it the entire drive to the airport. I was about ready to chuck them  the sign out the window before we even got there.

So we made it to the airport. I called Mark to remind him to bring his little point and shoot w/him and the video camera since he was meeting us there and I did NOT even want to lug my giant camera w/ me.  We were about 15 minutes early…again…a freakin’ lifetime when you’ve already waitied forever. More fighting over the sign.

Finally, her flight arrived and we went to wait near the bottom of the escalators entering the baggage claim area.  More waiting…….anothe lifetime…..

Brooklyn started screaming “there she is! there she is! I seeeeeeeee her!” At which point everyone in the airport also saw her…I’m sure she felt not at all self concious.

She was just as beautiful in person as in her photos. She looked so releived when she saw us and realized she’d finally made it.  Her two day travel journey/nightmare was over. She had arrived in Washington DC yesterday and had to stay overnight there….only to get up and head back early this a.m……only to be delayed 3 hours. Welcome to the U.S.

We all drove home.  We chatted a bit but mostly just let her take in the scenary around her. I kept imagining how she must feel and my heart would ache because I knew she was probably so nervous and scared and just didn’t know what the heck to think. I can’t even imagine. At this point I realized we didn’t get a single photo of her arrival. We did get video so I hope to figure out how to post that here soon to share.

At home we unloaded her 3 pieces of luggage, which although seemed to weigh alot, really didn’t when you think she’ll be here for 11 months. We took her upstairs to show her her room. She seemed very happy….totally a releif to me since I have been consumed with preparing it for her for the past week. This is where I should insert a nice lovely photo of how her room looked. You’ll have to wait for that one…and maybea while.

She wanted to shower and unpack so we left her to settle in a bit. i thought brooklyn would climb the walls before she came out of her room again.

We had a nice afternoon. She let us look through her photo album and we talked and tried to get to know each other the best we could w/ 3 screaming kids flocking around. She brought everyone gifts which was so incredibly sweet of her. The kids were so excited.  I finally realized I needed to get my camera out and get a few shots. And I will totally say that normally I wouldn’t even post these here. I have them up on Facebook which seemed to be good enough….but based on this post by Maile yesterday (thanks girl) I knew I wanted this suckers up here.

So w/out more random babbling leading up to the crap-o-la but significant photos……here ya go peeps.