November 5th, Thursday, was a big day for us. We moved back to the United States of America! Our flight left Lima at 2am, so we actually left our house in San Isidro around 9:30pm Wednesday. We got there with plenty of time. Andrés and Licet met with us. They wanted to get some dinner with us before we went through security, but between waiting for Delta to open their lines and then Andrew's lap ticket not being purchased (again), it took much too long. Like we were the last ones from our flight to get through the ticket counters. Blessings, though, were seeing a friend from our ward, Graciela, who was escorting a missionary; the airport personnel letting Andrés come to the ticket counter with us since we had three trolleys of bags; and Henlie being relatively good while we waited an eternity for them to figure out the ticket. Oh! And giving Andrew a checked bag, even though he didn't have a seat. It meant we had one less overage :)
Andrés misses Andrewcito.
Anyway, we finally made it through chatted for a few minutes with Andrés and Licet, changed Andrew, and went through security. In Peru, no one can bring liquid in excess of 3 oz through security. (In the US, children can. It just has to be tested.) Also, I was wearing Andrew in the wrap, and they had to manhandle us both to make sure I wasn't hiding anything between us. In the US? They wipe your hands with a little strip and run it through a machine to check for residues. I don't think we had to take our shoes off in Peru, though. So, bonus?
Matt had to sign some stuff for Andrés.
Our flight to Atlanta was super empty, which was kind of nice because people could move around and find nicer sleeping arrangements. I felt like the staff was a little more lax on their duties, though. Like, they're getting ready for landing and still picking up breakfast trays. Oh well :) They were nice enough. We also made super good time, like we landed 30-45 minutes before schedule in Atlanta. This worked out pretty well for us. We had a scheduled 2 hour layover, but between landing early and our flight to Salt Lake being delayed 31 minutes (the pilot of the plane before us didn't show, so they had to find a new one), we had plenty of time to go through customs, get our stuff rechecked, and change both children's diapers and put them in actual clothes (they flew in their PJs because of the time :))
My family sleeping while I watch Inside Out. I actually fell asleep the last like 5 minutes and had to rewind it once I woke up :)
My cute little pancakes. However, the only fruit I was able to eat in that fruit cup were the watermelon pieces. I'm sorry, but those are not pineapples! We miss good fruit :)
And then we flew to Salt Lake! Larry was kind enough to come up with the truck so we could get all of us and our things home. I think we were the only ones from our flight who were actually staying in Salt Lake City. I feel like we made decent time getting out to the baggage carousel, but there were no other people there. In fact, two airport workers were loading all of it on a large cart. Then they offered to wheel it for us, but Matt didn't have any US dollars smaller than $100, so he was just going to get carts and do it ourselves. Instead, he did pay the one guy in soles, and we met up with Grandpa and got loaded in.
Matt and Andrew waiting in Atlanta.
Asleep in Grandpa's truck.
We made it!
It was so good to be back. Even better is being able to go to Grandma's to have dinner. Devan and Kayla came over after and Devan helped Matt put our bed together so we had somewhere to sleep. It has been very nice being back. (Except the cold!) But having family around and being able to speak English has been good. And now we are still putting our house back together, so that is why I am super behind on my thankful posts!
Henlie was so excited to go back to Utah to see Charlie!
Other thankful tidbits from the trip:
Elder Brown. Poor kid was going home (to Bozeman, Montana! He appreciated Big Bang Theory for putting them on the map haha) after injuring, or rather, re-injuring, his ACL after two weeks in the MTC in Peru. He does plan to reenter the field when he's fully healed up. We had a good chat, and it is super nice to have common ground with someone instantly due to religion.
We also sat in front of another missionary who was going home from Tennessee, Spanish speaking, on our way to SLC. Again, I think it's fun traveling with missionaries :)
Drinkable milk. In Atlanta waiting for our flight, we bought some drinks. Matt and Henlie got juice, but they had chocolate milk...and I totally got some. And it was delicious.
Henlie's patriotism. In Atlanta, there was a big American flag going through security. She saw it and said, "There's my flag!" She's super excited to live in her country and get to see her flag all the time. Although, she's not so good about sharing it. ("It's my flag, not Andrew's flag.")
