A Year Ago Today…

We finally, finally were home sweet home.

We left the hotel in Washington DC at a really icky hour… I think it was 5:30 a.m. Josh and Ben had slept from the time they laid down Saturday afternoon until I woke them up to get ready that morning, so they had gotten lots of rest! We said good-bye to my Dad and were feeling good going into this last leg of our journey clean and well-rested.

Things got kind of yucky here though…we got to the airport with plenty of time…checked in, got some fruit and snacks at a little gift shop and sat at our gate waiting to board. We waited and waited. We finally boarded, and then we got on the plane and waited and waited. There was no weather…we weren’t really sure what we going on. We got some excuse about our plane not being “out” and ready when it was supposed to, and then losing our “place” in line. Who knows what the deal was. But as I sat there checking my watch, it got less and less likely that we would make our connection in Denver.

This was the first time in the trip I got really crabby… we were so CLOSE to being home, and being delayed another few hours was torture.

The flight went fine though…Ben was just happy happy to be back on a plane, and was just as well behaved and he was the day before. The flight seemed super fast after the one from Addis to Washington DC and we were in Denver before we knew it.

Unfortunately we had missed our connection. UGH. We did some running around, trying to find the very next flight out of Denver and into Salt Lake and got our tickets fixed. We made calls to home… My best friend had brought my older five kids with her family to Utah to meet our plane, and I hated that they would be stranded waiting for us. We had been traveling for something like 44 hours, and now with just a one hour flight to go, we were delayed. Ick.

A few hours later we were on our way, and it seemed like we were landing just a few minutes after we had taken off. We tried to explain to Ben that we were finally going to see his brothers and sisters and we were all really, really excited.

I expected this big cheer, or screaming mass of people or something as we rounded the corner to where families and friends are allowed to meet travelers at the SLC airport, but they were no where to be found! I scanned the room and noticed them at the other end of the baggage claim and we started heading that way…we sort of “snuck up” on them! It turns out that they thought we were on a different flight and that we wouldn’t be in for another hour or two, and were just getting ready to go take the kids to eat. Good thing we didn’t miss them, because it would have been REALLY disappointing to have no one be there!!

The kids were all over Ben, and he was not as shy as I thought he would be. He definitely recognized them from the pictures and I think he was really happy to be around kids again after being with just Josh and me for so long. Josh’s Mom and Dad were also there, as well as some other friends, and we all decided to go to dinner before the long drive home. It was sort of surreal for me to stand there and see Ben with the other kids (who all looked HUGE next to him!!!).

We went to one of our favorite family restaurants…it is a nice restaurant with great food, but a really fun atmosphere, and a playground in the middle. Ben ran and played with the kids and we could see he was going to fit in really easily.

We ate and visited and really enjoyed the dinner, and then we loaded kids up into the van and headed home. I have to say that after riding around in the taxis in Addis, our 15 passenger Ford felt HUGE. And the roads felt huge…they looked so wide open and uncrowded. I could only imagine what they looked like to Ben! I had thought that Ben would sit up front close to Josh and I, but he got right into the back with the rest of the kids and got his first glimpse at a Gameboy. 

The kids kept “forgetting” that Ben couldn’t really understand them, and I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for Ben to have five kids chattering at him in a language he couldn’t understand, but they found ways to communicate and there was lost of laughing coming from the back of the van.

Three hours later we arrived home and got to reunite with the little three kids and my Auntie. Walking through the front door and being HOME was wonderful beyond words. We let the kids run around a little and show Ben around, and then, since it was after 9 p.m., we got everyone ready and into bed. Ben got right into his bed, fell asleep within minutes and slept all night.

Home sweet home.

It was an amazing trip, our Ben was incredible, happy, loving and doing better than we ever could have imagined, and we had many life-changing experiences in Ethiopia…one of which would ultimately bring us back to Africa and expand our family once again…

But that is another story.