We made it!

We landed around 10:15 yesterday morning.  We were toward the end of the immigration line.  We ended up being with 2 others from the team who had missed their flight from the night before.  We were all a bit anxious.  Tommy got through no questions asked.  Megan was asked a few questions.  And we were by far asked the most.  Leah's birthday.  How old are the kids?  Did we have a number?  It was odd.  But he didn't seem that interested.  He let us through.

PRAISE THE LORD!  At that point, we didn't care at all that it took forever to get our bags.  Nor did we care that we were eating arepas for lunch at the airport.  We just cared that we were there.  We were in and we could live in Venezuela again.  We had a 3ish hour car ride to Valencia.  The kids were pooped and both slept at different points.  It was so relieving.

We arrived to have a few people greet us and help us with our bags.  It was fun to see faces from the team and students.  We enjoyed the warm weather and didn't even mind how dirty our apartment was.  We were home.  The kids didn't even come with us to take the bags to our place.  Kristin stayed with them while they played in the courtyard area.  We went and got water to drink since we had barely any.  Ran into some other people doing that, gathered our kids and just relished in the fact that we were home.

What followed was a nice little time of each of us opening 1 Christmas present.  It was really sweet and fun.  The kids were so excited to see their toys again.  Then the unpacking of the bags began.  This was no small feat.  4 loads of laundry later, and I'm still not done.  We all went to bed at a decent time and thoroughly enjoyed the fact that we were no longer living out of suitcases, sleeping in beds that weren't our own and no longer living in limbo.  It feels great!

Today we celebrated Christmas.  More on that later.  For now, we are just super grateful that we didn't have any issues getting back in.  We are blessed beyond what we could ever imagine.  We are home.