Finally

So, after blogging endlessly about how the phone wasn't ringing, once it did, it took me four days to update.

I will readily admit that it's not just because I've been busy getting ready to be on maternity leave (which I have been) but that I'd been wanting to scrap about the call right away and couldn't find time to do that immediately.

Anyway, now that my travel call confession is out of the way... I suppose the call wasn't as climactic as it could have been, given the fact that I'd been calling anyone I could at Holt for days, trying to figure out if we could speed things up. We'd gotten a heads up on Good Friday that flying to Korea wouldn't get him home any earlier than they could get him escorted, which was April 21.

The whole should-we-travel discussion was interesting. Our primary reason for not traveling before now was that Rob only gets five days off from work and we wanted to spend that time bonding, not in transit. I also have a mental block about being the person to physically remove my child from the only mother he's ever known. I've never wanted to be the person to inflict that trauma. I did find out during my investigation that there's actually something called a trauma bond. Apparently, the child actually quickly trusts the person they see another trusted person (the foster mom) trust enough to hand over the kid. That's a complicated sentence and concept, actually.

In the end, we settled for knowing our baby had an actual day to come home and waited for the *real* call. I was quite shocked that it didn't come on Monday, and became concerned all over again that they did not have an escort. I was particularly certain this was true because on Good Friday, they'd told us they could get him home April 21 or 22. That didn't sound very final to me. The story was that seats were hard to come by. If that was true, why did they still not have a final date??

Well, my phone finally did ring at 12:05 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21, and the mystery was quickly solved. The reason for the two dates was that there was an extra layover in the flight. Even though he would be leaving Seoul on April 21, he would have to travel from Seoul to San Francisco to Denver and then to Philadelphia. His final arrival time would have been 12:30 a.m. on April 22.

We scrambled once again to decide if we should go meet him in Denver. That seemed like a ton of travel for both Max and his poor escort. As it turns out, I could not locate two seats in the same cabin on a single nonstop flight. We settled in again for the middle of the night arrival and began to plan accordingly.

Much to my surprise, my phone rang again on Wednesday morning. It was the Holt branch director letting me know they'd found a better flight. The new route now has him going from Seoul to Chicago, and then on to Philly. He'll arrive home on Tuesday, April 21 at 9:19 p.m.

The last few days have been a whirlwind of final preparations, many of them getting me ready to be away from work for three months. I feel pretty settled now and hope these last few days don't drag.

We are going to tidy up the house this weekend, go to a Bark For Life (doggie Relay) event tomorrow and just generally get ourselves ready for the big day. Sam seems to not even notice all the commotion. I can't really blame him. Four months of waiting is a long time to a nearly five year old. I hope he's ready come Tuesday!

We did have a bit of sad news this morning. After four years of happily living in a bowl in our living room, our beta fish Roosevelt died this morning. We were surprisingly sad at this turn of events. Sam asked quite a few questions about it, the main one being when he can get a new fish. The poor kid has lost three pets in three years. I guess it's taught him that these things happen, so he doesn't seem to be too distraught. I just wish the bad news hadn't come during a week that was already stressful.

**Scrapper's note: The layout above was for the Sweet Shoppe Spin-A-Lift challenge. I was all to happy to lift my all-time favorite scrapper, Melissa Lewis.