Home At Last!!

The long saga is finally over.  Our little Immaculée is finally home where she belongs.  As our earlier posts suggested, it was a tough struggle.  Once we knew that Immaculée had a plane ticket from Kinshasa DRC to Minneapolis, we bought plane tickets to Minneapolis so that we could be there when she arrived.  Late on Friday, November 12, we found out that the group would not be permitted to leave Kinshasa.  We were told that it would probably be the next day, so we decided to go to Minneapolis anyway.  When we were in the Denver airport we got more bad news -- first, that the group would still not be allowed out of DRC, and second, that there was a blizzard in Minneapolis and all flights were canceled.  We waited around for several hours and they decided to let one plane fly on in to Minneapolis.  We arrived to find 12 inches of snow.  On Sunday we had to make more decisions.  Jim had to fly back to Oklahoma City and Brycie stayed in Minneapolis.  She was stranded there until Friday, November 19, when she was finally united with our daughter.

This is Patty, the Exeutive Director of our adoption agency, Acres of Hope, with Immaculée in tow.

Brycie, Immaculée and Patty

Mom and daughter.  Welcome to America little one.

Remnants of the 12 inch snowstorm in Minneapolis.

Our little rental car in Minneapolis.

Brycie, waiting it out in Minnesota.

Brycie and Immaculée arriving in Oklahoma City.

Immaculée and her new Bitty Baby doll, which we bought for her over two years ago.

A beautiful little girl.

Immaculée playing with her dolls.

This is too precious.  We have a marble statue of Mother Mary in our home, and Immaculée saw it and went over to it and this is a picture of what she did.