Day 47: Wednesday, 7/6

(Note: this post was originally from 7/6/11 but was just found sitting in my draft folder. Better late than never, right?)

As I figured, it was a bit too much to expect that the package made its way with magical speed to the Embassy here in the RMI. We heard back from our lawyer late last night and he suggested we call Ken at the DHL office to see if he had better information than was available from the tracking tool online. While it said that the package finished processing in Guam, there was no further information. After breakfast (the ham and cheese omelet was delicious, btw) we drove to the DHL office to ask. Ken said that his system shows our package is on the flight arriving tonight, however, the manifest he has does not list it. This isn't uncommon... sometimes a package is thrown onto a flight but not noted so there's a good chance it'll be here tonight... around 8 or 9 pm. Guess when our original flight leaves? 8:45 pm.

Since there's no possible way it'll be here in time for the flight tonight, we headed over to the Continental office by Payless to reschedule. Note to future families – there are two signs by the Payless saying Continental... one is the ticketing office and the other near the sign for the travel agency. Make sure you go into the ticketing office – which is through a door on the same side as the door to Payless, not the street side - if/when you need to adjust your flights home. Since our tickets are fully changeable without penalty, we decided to gamble and make them for Friday. The risk is that the package is not on the flight tonight – the next opportunity is the flight Friday night and then, same as today, it'll arrive too late for us to make it out on that flight. And since the Embassy won't process things outside of business hours, we'd have to wait until Monday to leave. We feel pretty confident that if not Friday, then Monday will be our day.

I, however, am hoping for Friday. Of course because it starts our journey home earlier but mostly because we'd arrive in Honolulu at 3:30 am Friday morning and not fly out until 7 pm Monday night... a whole weekend in Hawaii! Cindy, the ticketing agent at the office, was very apologetic when she realized that the earlier flights out of Honolulu were booked. Oh gee... I guess we'll make due :)

So, we're back at the room now and are trying to figure out plans for visiting with Emi today. While we are having a great time with everyone in the family, we are getting a little tired of hanging out in our room. They love it because of the A/C and we do treat to 1 or 2 meals while they're here... plus the supply of “mountain”... meaning Mountain Dew :) But, we really want to get out and do something elsewhere. We are going to give Maddy a call and see if she has any suggestions. She was really sick yesterday so I hope she's feeling better enough to help us work out a plan for the next couple days.

Afer a little rest in the room, we called Maddy to let her know everything we've found out about our visa so far. She'll be helping us on the day we leave by making sure our birth family is informed and that any who want to come to the room or airport to say goodbye, can. When I asked if she had any suggestions she couldn't think of one. I'm pretty sure that's a sign that it's time to head home, right? We decided to schedule lunch with Emi and Maddy for Thursday. We also asked her to tell Emi that we would be here all afternoon and were free if she was interested in coming over. We got a call from Maddy shortly after saying that Emi was busy with chores around the house. More accurately, she'd falled asleep and not gotten her chores done yet so she would not be coming over after all. Tomorrow is on for 11:00 – the girls will pick the location.

Jeff and I had skipped lunch so we went downstairs around 4:30 for an early dinner. The baked penne pasta is pretty good so I was going to order it again... they were out of penne, however, linguine was available and I liked it even better. By 6:15 we were off to the airport to see the Havlicks one last time before they flew off... on our plane, by the way...

We arrived at the airport and they were in line waiting to check in. Their birth family was there and the oldest girl who's name I can never remember and really cannot spell came up behind me to “scare” me. She's so adorable – but really getting into that “tween” stage so she's a bit sassy as well. We hung out a while waiting for Melodie and John to finish checking in and then we got guard duty over the bags while they rangled up all the kids and started their goodbyes. We said ours quickly wanting to give them more timewith the family and then we took off. We've exchanged email addressed and already confirmed each other as Facebook friends so I look forward to keeping up with the happenings in Chicago after we get back home.

The Midwest Reuinion is being held there this year in mid-July but it's doubtful we'll make it as we'll just be getting back and settled in to our routine there. I'd really like to spend some of my leave at my actual home... I'm missing things like taking Grace for walks around the lakes and going to visit family in the middle of the week! If we end up heading home on Friday, I'll have spent 6 weeks of my leave in the RMI... the first two weeks were actually vacation... give or take a day or two, that's 7 full weeks in country. Of course, if we don't make it out Friday, then add a few more on to that.

The rest of the evening was DVD TV and ice cream from downstairs. To bed early and hoping for another full night of sleep from Grace... it was not to be. Around midnight I felt something crawling on my arm. I caught a glimps of something small and black... could have been a fly. Yeah, that's what I'm going with... a fly. Regardless, I fortified my position on the bed with pillows near the edge and tried to go back to sleep. Miss Grace decided 4:00 am was a good time to wake up so we got a new diaper and a bottle... but didn't want to fall back asleep. Now, at 6:45, she's finally back in her bed and mostly asleep.

Of course, I didn't go back to bed. The movie channel is back and Zoro 2 is on. I've also been checking the DHL tracker and nothing additional about the package. I hope it just means it hasn't been updated yet and not that a package didn't come in last night. We have to wait until 8:30 to call DHL to find out if it arrived. I'm going a little nuts waiting...