Well, we made it!
The trip back was about the same as our trip over - it was long (but not as long as before - only 22 hours this time). We had our fair share of just-plain-awful moments, like when Lawrence figured out how to undo his seat belt *during* the landing into Atlanta and proceeded to run and jump and scream "I don't want to be on the airplane!" while the flight attendant belted over the intercom "WE ARE ON AN ACTIVE TAXIWAY!!" (Ok, so should I get up too and restrain him?? You're not helping me, dude!) (What happened was that I did get a hold of his arm and I put him together with Everett in a seat next to me and I held out my arm across them both while holding the baby in the other.) (It got us through that moment, anyway.) And then there were moments like on the way to Dammam when Everett was happily watching movies on the screen in the seat back, Lawrence and the baby were sleeping, and I got to watch about 45 minutes of a movie, too! Wow! That part was easy. The lines in passport control in Dammam took two hours, which was also long, but Mike was waiting for us after customs and he scooped us up and took us home. We are just now getting over the jet lag. Hopefully the kids will sleep through the night tonight.
It's a little easier to come back to something the second time. We came home from the airport to our home with all our stuff, and everything is really familiar, as it should be. I guess I was expecting that it would be as difficult as when we first came, with no stuff and no car and no idea where anything was or how anything worked. But after a day or two, we are back in the swing of things. We took a family trip to the commissary tonight, and we signed Everett up for T-ball this afternoon, and Lawrence has his first day of preschool on the 16th of September. So life will continue to plug along over here, and maybe it will even get a little easier once both boys are in school (hooray!! but not until October - Everett's preschool starts really late!) Our friends were all already back. We went to Shawarma Night with one family and bumped into another while we were there. Our next door neighbors were thrilled to have us back, too, and I hope to get in touch with more playgroup friends this week.
Hopefully some pictures will be upcoming tomorrow...I have a shot of all the baby food that I packed and brought back (you can't get baby food here) and we somehow managed to get four months worth of it onto two shelves in the pantry. Good thing I am married to an engineer! (Can hardly believe little C is already eating pears, rice, and banana! Big girl!)
Miss you, but glad you're back safely!
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