We made it home!!! Of course we had a wonderful time but we are now totally exhausted and may I add take notice to the fact that it has taken three days to blog about our experience :/
We arrived late Friday night, this after the car ride from hell (pardon my French!) but you would not believe how difficult it is traveling with two children now, not to mention traffic didn't help out at all! Our car ride was only suppose to take us three hours. After arriving on Friday night in Washington D.C. I was spent and all I wanted to do was go to bed. However, I knew that there was a get-together at the hotel pool so Ron and I decided that he would go to the pool with Ryan (after all we were there for Ryan, it was his event, so to speak) and I would stay back in the hotel room and go to bed with Luke. Ryan had a ball that night :)
On Saturday we woke up early went downstairs to eat breakfast, which by the way was expensive but good, and then we were off to the Metro to take us to the Smithsonian's. Ryan wanted to see the "Air and Space Smithsonian", so that is what we did. It was perfect for children Ryan's age, however I feel as if Luke was bored. But Luke did get to sit in a helicopter cockpit, which I'm sure was the highlight of his day :) We then hightailed it back to the Metro, almost got lost, but made it back to the hotel to freshen up for the Azerbaijani Cultural Center. We were late to the Azerbaijani Cultural Center and Ryan missed the group photo...the highlight of the trip :( I did however take photos of the children enjoying the festivities of the Azerbaijani Cultural Center. I even videoed an Azerbaijani woman dancing the traditional dance of Azerbaijan, just beautiful!
We were off to the DeBakey's house were we would spent time watching our Azerbaijani children run around, play in the pool, enjoy traditional Azerbaijani food, bid on the Silent Auction (the Silent Auction benefits the UAFA), and spend a delightful night chatting with old friends and making new ones as well :) It was an evening to remember!
A funny thing happened at the DeBakey's house, Ron was watching Luke, as Luke was running up and down this hill, well Luke ran away from Ron a little too far and Ron says in this deep voice
идите сюда! (translated this means come here and pronounced "idi suda!"), there were special guests from the Azerbaijan Embassy and the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce at the reunion and this Azerbaijani woman over hears Ron stating this to Luke and she was pleasantly shocked or this is how I read her face immediately after Ron told Luke to "idi suda!". Ron asked me if I caught her face and how pleasantly shocked she looked. In Azerbaijan they do in fact speak Russian.
This made me reflect and brought me back to our court date for Luke on May 15, 2008, when the Russian prosecutor asked me "how would you raise two different children from two different countries"? In a lot of ways Azerbaijan is similar to Russia and in many, many ways they are two worlds apart. What an incredible process to be a part of...what I mean is we (Ron and I) get to raise these WONDERFUL boys as ours (Americans) but no matter what they will always be a part of their cultural/heritage too, whether it may be Azerbaijani or Russian.
We left the DeBakey's house at about 9PM and no sooner had we turned the corner and the children were out of it! That night all of us slept extremely well! On Sunday we woke up and were totally exhausted...still :/ We decided not to go to the National Zoo and to head home. Which we did, after we said our "Goodbyes" to everyone who was staying at the hotel. I knew that Ryan was tired b/c he told me that he didn't want to go to the Zoo all he wanted to do was go home. Believe it or not, the children actually took a two and a half hour nap on the way home. Our trip home was easier than our trip there!
Love & HUGS,
Jenny, Ron, Ryan & Luke :)
PS-This was our first trip "post Russia", it was quite interesting :) An example...I found myself brushing my teeth on Saturday morning and not even realizing that I wasn't "drinking" the water :) Ron pointed this out to me...LOL :) Old habits die hard, I guess???
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