Last Day of our first visit trip (1/19)

Well, the last day of our visit trip was one of the most dreadful days of my life. We spent a lot of the night awake... just holding and staring at Lili. We were really having a rough time holding our emotions in, but felt that we really needed to be strong for Max. We had begun to prepare him for the fact that it was the day that we had to head home to Chicago. He was SOOOO sad. He begged us to let him take Lili home. We tried to explain the best we could that we could not take her with us... that she wasn't "ready" to go yet and that we had to leave her with Ligia & Angel and their girls.

We had made plans with Ligia to have lunch at 2:00 and spend some time together before we gave Lili back. As the morning progressed, we realized that we were not going to be able to eat. We were just too sad. Moses finally went to the lobby to use a phone to call Ligia... she was so wonderfully compassionate and understanding. She had anticipated how sad and miserable we would be, and told us that she would do whatever we were most comfortable with. Moses asked her to still come by at 2:00, but that we would just spend some time together in the lobby of the hotel.

We checked out of our room and had our luggage locked up in the storage room. We were waiting in the lobby of the hotel when Ligia arrived with her three daughters. They were very excited to see Lili, but were also compassionate about what we were going through. Ligia told us that she could only imagine how sad we were... and that she knew her family would be that sad when it was time for us to pickup Lili and bring her home permanently. Max was a wreck... he was crying, sobbing, and clinging to me. My heart was broken not only because we were leaving Lili, but also because I couldn't do anything for Max. Moses realized very quickly that Max and I were just falling apart... he decided that we were just postponing the inevitable, so he made the decision to speed up our goodbyes. Instead of visiting with the foster family for a couple of hours, we spent maybe 20 minutes together before we said goodbye. Moses apologized to me later, but I was well aware that he had made the best decision for all of us.

We tried to comfort and distract Max from his sadness... we walked to the mall and got him an ice cream cone at McDonald's and let him play in the play area. Finally, around 4:00, the hotel shuttle drove us to the airport to wait for our flight. We had several long hours of waiting at the airport... yuck! The Guatemala City airport has 8 gates... it's very small, and there's not much to keep a 4-year old busy during a 4 hour wait!! We went through a couple of the small shops that were in the airport, and ordered a couple of sandwiches to eat before we left. There was basically one place to get something to eat... for the first time since we'd been in Guatemala, we were also able to get an iced coffee! Everywhere we went in Guate, we asked if they had iced coffee... and they looked at us like we had two heads! So, we had our coffee and shared a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. We ordered Max a "French Dog".... thought it would be a regular hot dog. Instead, it was this huge sub bun that was grilled like a panini. The hot dog was cut in half long ways so that it laid flat... and, of all combinations, they put mayo, mustard and avocado on the hot dog!!! Moses had to pick off most of the avocado and mayo before Max would eat it... but it gave us a good laugh!

We finally were able to board the plane, although we had to split up our seats a little bit. It was a very full flight, and Max and I were sitting in the aisle and middle seat on one side, with Moses across the aisle in the next seat. Max finally fell asleep after takeoff, although he did wake up a couple of times crying for Lili. Moses and I didn't sleep much, as we were still trying to process the emotions of the day. We arrived in Chicago at 12:30 am and had to wait quite a while to get through immigration and customs. Finally, we got outside (in the freezing cold with no coats!), found Uncle Mike and the van, and loaded up to head home. First stop on the way home... Dunkin Donuts for large iced coffees!!! By the time we got home, Moses figured I'd be eager to get the luggage unpacked and everything put away. He asked me what I wanted him to start working on, and I told him he could do whatever he wanted, but I was taking Max upstairs, getting our jammies on, and going to bed! I took my boy to our room so he could sleep with us, and we held each others hands as we fell asleep. I was so depressed about leaving Lili, but tried to stay focused on my wonderful son and husband and how nice it was to be back home.