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Posted: 10:25 PM- YFZ RANCH, Texas - Anne Sweeter Jessop puts her arms around her mother's neck and hangs on, her smile a Texas-mile wide.

She is home. Her mother is here. So are her father and three brothers. And that is all this 3-year-old cares about.

A day after a district judge gave the go-ahead for parents to reclaim their children, families are trickling back to the YFZ Ranch outside Eldorado.

Edson Jessop and his wife Zavenda Young were among the first to return. The couple were on their way to Waco to visit Ephraim, 7, and Zachery, 9, on Monday when word came they could pick up their children.

They turned the three-hour drive from Waco to Hockley, into a "mad dash" to get Anne and Russell, 5 - squeezing in at seven minutes to 5, just before the shelter closed.

The workers cried as they bid good-bye to the children, Zavenda said.

The family then drove through the night and arrived here at 6:30 a.m. today.

It has been more two months since authorities raided the ranch amid allegations that children were physically and sexually abused there. That led the judge to remove some 450 children from their parents, all members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But two higher courts said the judge didn't have enough evidence of abuse to keep the children from their parents at the ranch.

The events that led their families to be torn apart are too fresh, future state actions too unknown, to return to the ranch now, some parents say. While the state investigation continues, they are setting up homes elsewhere.

But Zavenda does not want to be anywhere else.

"I'm not afraid of them," she said. "I haven't done anything wrong."

And: "It's a beautiful place to raise children."

Zavenda said, at first, her children could not believe they were really going home, that their parents were not about to leave them once again.

As Anne butterflied around her mother, Zavenda said: "She's gone through so much trauma every time I had to leave her. When she'd realize you were going to leave her again, she'd pull back into a shell."

In bits and pieces, Anne is giving her parents a glimpse of her view of the past weeks. Here is one story she told: " 'Mother, I had an accident and I was all alone and you weren't there to help me and I waited and I decided to sing,' " Zavenda recounted.

The experience has been no less trying on the boys, who were not reluctant to let reporters know they did not appreciate yet another intrusion in their lives.

"They are so dazed," said Zavenda. "They check out once in a while."

When Zavenda had to leave her children at the San Angelo Coliseum, Zachery and Ephraim stepped up as the little ones' protectors. Then came a third fracturing of the family when the older boys were shipped to one shelter and the younger children to another.

"It was very traumatic separating those children," Zavenda said. Their anxiety at that separation was alleviated some when a "good" caseworker made a sibling visit possible.

Zachery was the oldest of nearly 50 children sheltered at Methodist Children's Home in Waco. The others looked to him for direction, Zavenda said.

When shelter workers wanted to introduce the children to something new, Zachery acted as their go-between.

"He's had a tremendous responsibility being the leader," Zavenda said.

Now his job is to be a little boy again.

When they arrived at the ranch this morning, the children were "so excited."

"And yet, in a way you can see how sad it is," Zavenda said. "What normally would have been so full of people - it's quiet. It's not over yet."

Faith, most of all, got the couple through the weeks of separation from their children. But support of strangers helped, too.

"I learned there are some very kind, honest people in this world," Zavenda said.

Said Edson: Many times, people would come up and say, 'We're praying for you, God bless you.' "

For the couple, the focus now is on trying to "pick up the pieces and carry on." Slowly.

The children, Zavenda said, "haven't even asked to leave the house."

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