The Big Recap
We were supposed to receive Audrey's visa Wednesday, June 10th and arrive home Thursday, June 11th. However, the US consulate was unable to issue her visa on time due to an internal system issue.
Instead, we incurred an unavoidable fee and rescheduled our flights for Monday morning, assuming we'd get her visa by Friday.
We did not get her visa Friday. So we emailed our travel agency, Adoption Airfare, letting them know that because the consulate was closed for the week, there was no way we would make our Monday flight. Friday night, we slept through 12 missed calls with the ringer on, 10 of which were from our tireless agent, trying to reach us to cancel our flight in time to avoid more fees. How did we sleep through 12 calls?
Saturday morning was stressful. We awoke to realize that we'd missed the cutoff and would have another fee. Then, Saturday afternoon we learned that the US consulate workers in Guangzhou worked overtime that day to issue us our visa. So we received Audrey's visa Saturday afternoon and would still be able to make our Monday morning flight. Glad we missed those calls.
Thankfully, we had just signed up for a Marriott credit card for this trip, hoping to be able to use the sign on points for our hotel stay in Guangzhou to save some money. Although we couldn't use the points for the first part of our stay due to blackout dates, we were able to use them to completely cover our unexpected stay of four nights.
Monday morning our flight from Guangzhou was delayed on takeoff due to weather but we still made it to our Beijing flight on time. But we had a one hour delay leaving Beijing due to congestion at the airport.
We arrived in Houston Monday 4 pm US time with a two hour layover due to our delay. At Houston, you need three hours minimum to get through the lines at customs. It was a mess. Once we made it through the long, serpentine line, we were escorted to the DMV of the airport: immigration receiving. While waiting in receiving, somehow my shirt became unbuttoned while holding a wiggling Audrey and I flashed our customs officer. I wish I was kidding.
Once we finished with the poor officer and he stamped Audrey's US visa signifying her US citizenship, we learned that we had indeed missed our connecting flight to Tulsa. Actually, many people had missed flights because there was a hurricane/tropical storm off the gulf. So, just like when we adopted Eva, we stayed the night in Houston our first night back in the US.
Late Tuesday morning, we boarded our flight to Tulsa and thankfully it left on time. There was a nice gap in the (bad) weather, so we finally arrived in Tulsa Tuesday afternoon and ate our obligatory meal at Chili's for some chips and salsa and headed home. The scenic route.
Audrey gasped and exclaimed EVERY time she saw a cow on the way home. It was pretty cute. I didn't realize how many farms are on our route home, but apparently many. And every cow sighting elicited a genuine gasp. Too cute.
Two Houses Two Dogs Two Girls
When we finally pulled into the driveway, five days later than expected, we were unpleasantly surprised to see Samson lying on our front porch. He is usually in the backyard, fenced in. In fact, the last time he got out of the fence was due to hysteria from fireworks on the 4th of July and our neighbor called the cops because he somehow got into their van in their garage. I kid you not.
Thankfully, he was not shot dead by a neighbor but was merely napping. We put him back in the fence before we unloaded the girls, and soon realized Margaret Dashwood was gone and a fallen tree limb had broken part of the fence.
Once we brought the girls inside, Eva's relief to be home was palpable. And Audrey was giddy, knee-running all over the place and giggling.
We then drove out to the land to see our Dabney house because drywall and painting happened while we were gone. The walls looked great, but we quickly saw that there had been a communication issue about our bathroom and the girls' room as they had been painted incorrectly...
So we drove home and had a quick dinner of fresh eggs, thanks to our good friend Michelle who took excellent care of our dogs and chickens while we were gone and saved us a nice batch of fresh eggs from the last few days. Then the girls were put to bed we began to unpack, do laundry, set up Audrey's bed in Eva's room, and take care of bills. Margaret Dashwood showed up right before Daniel was going to bed so both dogs are accounted for.
Audrey was up a lot during the night so I ended up just sleeping with her after about 4 am. We finally woke up around noon this afternoon. And Audrey got sick in the bed.
Daniel arranged for the paint errors and broken fence to be fixed and is at work today after two weeks away.
Eva is happily watching Pride and Prejudice and seems so much more at peace with life and her sister now that we are home. Audrey is miserable, having a hard time adjusting to US time, and I am catching her vomit. But you know what, if she was going to get sick, I'm just glad that she's sick now rather than on the plane.
Life often doesn't happen the way you think it should, but things just work out. It's such a relief to me to remind myself that God is in control and it's okay to trust Him. Despite disrupted schedules and stress and illness, I feel like we are buoyed by His abundant grace. I look at these girls whom I never would have imagined being ours and am moved to tears of thankfulness.