Once again, a delinquent post.  Annie boarded her plane and flew back to Colombia early Saturday morning.  She outdid herself, and bested even Malin’s record by checking an 81 lb bag.  I don’t even know how a bag can weigh 81 lbs without a boy hiding inside, but I checked and we still have two boys, so maybe she took someone else’s?  We got an e-mail from her on Sunday, and she made it home safely.

It was hard to say goodbye, and hard too to be saying good bye so early.  This year has not been an easy one.  The language barrier was hard to overcome, and teaching Annie how to drive in America took a lot of work – but we were making good progress.  Her last day of work was the day she was scheduled to have her final driving test, and she likely would have passed.  The boys had given her a lot of grief initially, especially Nicholas, but they’ve spent the last month yelling for her to come back downstairs and play after she heads up at the end of her day.  They’d accepted her.  They still missed their Malin and Lau Lau, but Annie was okay, too.  So in other words, we’d overcome most of the challenges, and everything was starting to work pretty well.

The boys are acting something like what they did after Malin left.  They’re obviously upset, and seem depressed, but aren’t able to communicate why.  So mostly they’re grumpy, despondent, and prone to tantrums over EVERYTHING.  They don’t call out for Annie, but they do talk about her.  It’s still “Annie’s room”, and “Annie’s chair”.  I really hate having to put them through this again so soon.  At least this time we knew to talk to the boys about it before hand, and give them an opportunity to say good bye.  And maybe it helped that this time the boys didn’t go to the airport to say goodbye (it was a 7:10am flight – waking the boys up at 4:30am did not seem like a wise idea).  We’ll see how it goes.  We were sorry to see Annie go.  She’s a very sweet girl, and we know how much she loved the boys, and how much they loved her.

And just to make sure we were clear on one point, when I said Annie left of her own volition – I meant it.  We did NOT ask her to go.  It had absolutely nothing to do with language, or driving, or the boys, or us, or anything about her experience here.  Annie felt a very strong need to go home, and made that decision on her own.

It’s a sad time.  We’re a little overwhelmed, and poor Marilyn is taking up the lion’s share of our daycare efforts.  We’re half way through the first week – only 7 1/2 weeks until our German reinforcements arrive.

In the meantime, here’s a very long slideshow of Annie’s time with us.

We miss you, Annie.  Good luck.

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