Haiti Trip, Part 9 of 9

Back Home

On Thursday morning, the woman who stayed in the hotel with us, had to catch the first of her two flights to Colorado around 6:30 am, so she left on the first airport shuttle at 5am. The rest of us got up an hour or two later, ate a nice breakfast, and then headed to the airport. We checked all our luggage – except for our smallest personal bags as carry-ons. We made it through the security checkpoint in a breeze, and then waited (with Starbucks that Jock and Carolyn brought to us) before boarding our flight to Chicago, which was on time. Our flight from Chicago to Des Moines was delayed about 45 minutes (while we were sitting on the tiny plane), but we finally made it back to Des Moines.

We exited the gates and came down the escalators to a small welcoming party – some friends of ours from the area that are also adopting two children from Haiti – from another orphanage, and Brian’s dad there to pick them up. It gave us a little foretaste of a welcoming party we might have when we bring our children home. I’ve heard of many families arriving home to a welcoming party at the airport, and it sounds like a great idea. Our ride didn’t park and come in, but instead had been circling for about an hour. So when we got our bags, we headed for home. It was a strange feeling to be driving again on smooth roads, and to be back home in our huge, empty, quiet house.

We made a few phone calls that evening to let people know we’d made it home. We talked to Kaylen, and she got a bit emotional at talking to us. She did great being away from us, and I’m so grateful to have my sister taking care of her and not having to worry about her. However, I think 12 days of her being away from us was bordering on too long for her. She’d only been away for a single night at a time since she became part of our family – and even that only a few times. We told her we’d come pick her up the next day, and Jock headed off to bed early. We were both exhausted, but I stayed up a bit later and downloaded all our pictures on the laptop. I had filled a 2GB memory card and half of a second 2 GB with one camera, and filled a 512 MB with our second camera, so it took quite a while to download all of that.

Friday morning, we drove up to my sister’s. She was working, so we went to get Kaylen from the babysitter’s house. We spent the afternoon at my sister’s house just enjoying each other and talking about our weeks, and about what we did. My niece and nephew got home from school, and also my dad and step-mom stopped by, and we showed them some of our pictures, and then my sister when she got home from work. We spent the night at my dad’s house and went out for breakfast with him, before stopping by my grandma’s house to share our pictures with her. She was surprised by how much Haiti looks like Guatemala. She and my grandpa spent some time down there during the Iowa winters many years ago. We were still full from breakfast, so we just headed straight home from Grandma’s house.

I was so tired, that I slept the whole way up to NE Iowa Friday morning, and the whole way back to our house Saturday afternoon. Sunday we got up and went to church, and then I took another really long nap Sunday afternoon. Monday it was back to work, but I was still pretty tired all week. The following weekend we were out of town Friday night and all day Saturday for a friend's birthday party, but I slept part of the 2-hour drive Friday night, and most of the way home Saturday night. Sunday I took another long nap in the afternoon, and this week I think I was back to normal – if there is such a thing. This weekend, we’re sticking around home. Today Jock and Kaylen did some cleaning – our house was a disaster from getting no attention the last 6 weeks. I got busy on our taxes! I did see that we will be able to take a deduction for our adoption expenses on our state taxes. The federal taxes have a tax credit, but we’ll have to hold off on that until Elijah & Josephine come home.