We are home safe and sound!!!

WE ARE HOME!!! So happy to be home but mixed emotions about leaving. First off I want to do a few thank yous to the people who helped make this happen. First off to my sister Cassie who basically took over being mom to the kids. She moved into our house and basically became mom to the kids for 11 days. It was a huge responsibility as the kids had many activities they had to attend and Cass had to keep up with all of that. Besides watching the kids, she also managed to single handedly clean and organize our entire house. We came home to a clean and wonderfully organized home with our closet and bathroom and kids room clean and totally organized-- something I have needed to do for a long time but have not because the task seems overwhelming. She did the monumental task for me and I soooooo appreciate it!!! Cass was the main reason this trip was possible and I greatly thank her from the bottom of my heart-- and Kev's too-- for being so willing to step in when we need. Thanks Cass!!! You are amazing and the kids love you like a mom!! WE LOVE YOU!!!!

The next thanks is for Laila. Lai was our scribe and poster and I so appreciate her maintaining our blog so people could follow our amazing journey. She was always so willing to help at any hour and her helping blessed many people who were able to see what these wonderful people have to live with and how much need there is. Thanks Lai for everything!!! WE LOVE YOU TOO!!!!

Another thanks to Don and Mary (Gma and Gpa) and my mom and dad for their help. Don and Mary did dinner for the kids many times and took them to Disneyland twice!! Lots of work and we appreciated it!!! Thanks to my parents for chipping in with the kids but also taking us to LAX and picking us up and driving us home. We really appreciated it! Also to Brad and Amy for letting the kids come to the farm and the boys spending the night. They had a blast- as always and I appreciate your willingness to help!

Life started back up this morning but we were thrilled to see the kids. Mia was taken when she came into our room this morning and saw it was not Cassie but mom and dad. She was so excited!! The boys waited up for us last night so we got to see them then although it was later as we got home from the airport around 11:30pm. It was fun seeing the kids and we missed them a ton!!

This morning I have been going through about 400 emails and trying to get things done. It is amazing how fast reality hits you and frankly being over in Haiti gave us a taste of slow life and I miss that. In the US we live a much faster pace life but here is southern California we live an even faster life than most. Really we do-- it is very fast paced and it leaves little down time. I want that to change a bit. I'm on summer vacation and only have my private practice to deal with so life should slow to an extent but I really want our lives to slow even during the school year. We need to do that!

I have some major reflections to do over our trip. It was a bag of mixed emotions and mixed experiences. It is hard to put into words what we experienced but it was tremendous! I will post more pictures with reflections and our plans for Daniel and Maxi soon. We are so excited about our plans Lo, Kev and I came up with and we have got a ton of buy in from Lai and my family. Its exciting but will share when I have time to post pics along with our plan.

I will try to post tomorrow but thanks so much for following and praying for our journey.