So here's the short of it, 
Anniversary today...


And here's the long.

Eighteen years ago today - around lunch time- Victor drove us from our hotel in Riga out into the country to the Incukaln Home for Children.  For the first time we met Liga and Valdis and took them back to the hotel for our first day together.




These are very early pictures we had of the children.  We got these pictures maybe in February.  We expected to travel to Latvia in March, then in April, and then we finally travelled the last of May.

This was on May 31, 1994 right after lunch.
Liga remembers that they made them take a shower, which was a stand up affair in a small tub with a hand held sprayer.  She doesn't remember being told that they would be leaving.  She doesn't remember knowing that they would be as she fondly calls it Adoptnapped that day.

There's so much more to the story!  So many memories crammed into that week that took us from Incukaln, to Poland (via Copenhagen), then from Poland to Germany (trouble with officials in the German airport), then from Germany to Atlanta (an airplane that was delayed about 6 hours), a night in Atlanta (with a boy who didn't know what a pool was and had to have his uncle fish him out!), and finally home to Chattanooga, TN.  This picture was taken the first morning after a sleep in their own beds on Tuxedo Circle.

Here they are today at lunch.  Celebrating with us.
He's 24 - She's 25.


And there are so many memories over these last 18 years!