What an amazing day!

We got into Vilnius very late, but made it to our hotel room and crashed! Even Ethan was saying "I think it's time to sleep." We all got a great night's sleep and jumped into van to head to Siauliai where Viktorija lives. We met with the directress of the orphanage first and was able to hear a little about Viktorija and ask some questions. Viktorija was so anxious to meet us they brought her to the meeting. She instantly became very shy and froze. The directress encouraged her to talk to us and took her around to shake all of our hands. Then I brought out the candy and she lit up. She loves candy!! We moved then to her dormitory and play room where they showed us some pictures of her. She was an adorable baby. She was beginning to warm up to us by now. The boys blew bubbles and we ate more candy. :-) I gave the bag for her to share with the other children and she went around and passed it out to all the kiddies sitting on potty chairs. Quite the sight to see. She then proceded to eat as many of the candies as she could before someone could get the bag back from her. The girl has a major sweet tooth. She showed us the box we sent her with all of her treasures inside. She went through the photo albulm we sent and pointed to all the pictures saying, "mama, dada, brother, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle," but all in Lithuanian of course. So she knows all of her families faces.

They then gave us a room for just us to play in. We brought out some stickers and markers and all colored together. Broderick and the boys are comunicating quite well with her. Makes me a little jealous that I could learn/remember more. Broderick says we are going to work on some phrases so I can talk to her more. She calls us Mama and Dada which just melts my heart. The boys were fantastic with her. Ethan started to repeat a word that she was saying about a stuffed animal she was holding, "mano" back and forth they would say, "mano, mano" only to find out they were saying "mine, mine" to each other. LOL!! They are going to get along great! By the time we left she was willing to give me a timid little hug goodbye, but then took the hands of Ethan and Harry and walked them to the door. It was a wonderful first visit.

After our visit, we were taken to our apartment, which is very nice and on the 5th floor. We are going to get our exercise, between the 5th floor and walking to the orphanage twice a day. We then made a trip to the "grocery store." Very interesting trying to purchase food when you don't know what it says. The boys found some frozen pizza which we ate tonight and B picked out some of his favorite Lithuanian dishes.  Milk and yogurt come in bags and we got what we thought was cheese puffs but turned out to be something sweet. All in all I think we did pretty good. The boys have all crashed for the night and we are not far behind them. It has been a very long couple of days. Thanks to everyone for their prayers that got us here safely. B feels we shouldn't post pictures until after court, so I'm so sorry your gonna have to wait until Friday to see some. But you can take my word for it, she's beautiful with a sweet little voice, a big smile, and an infectious laugh. Love to all of you from Siauliai, Lithuania!