Today is the day, my family comes back from New York. This is the longest that I have ever gone without my family. Not having the children here is really hard. Thankfully I have been able to talk to Liesl over FaceTime, what a difference that has made. We have probably put in four hours or more talking like that. That’s one of the best tools ever. Liesl really enjoyed being able to talk to me. I just wish that it would have worked for Luciana as well. And I wish that we had newer iPads to do it with rather than just the iPhones so that we could have a bigger picture. It was so hard to see.
The family did stay in Tennessee last night and were expecting to get home at four-ish this afternoon. Dominica did not have a house key and so needed me to be there before they were to let them in. So I went home around three once they were in the distant outreaches of the DFW and put in a little bit of time cleaning around the house while working from Dominica’s computer in the play room.
It was around four thirty when the family arrived. It was so good to see my girls. Luciana is walking so well now. I am not used to her being able to run around the house and explore everywhere. I was used to her walking in Europe, of course, but this is the first that I have seen her like this “at home” and it was quite a surprise. She is bigger, faster and has more hair than the last time that I saw her and she is saying many more words now too.
The Grices stayed for only a few minutes. Just enough time to unload the truck and use the restroom and then it was everyone back into the truck so that they could push on to Houston and to surprise Bennie who was unaware that they were coming back today.
We spent the evening just hanging out. I haven’t seen my girls in so long! Luciana was definitely in a kind of haze or shock as she tried to re-explore her home. We could tell that she remembered it but we are not sure just how much. She has been gone for just too long it would seem.
Liesl, for her part, was very excited to get to see all of her stuff again and was investigating all of her toys in no time and telling me all about our time apart and all of the things that she had been doing.