Today Carmen headed back to Spain and we were all sad to see her go. I picked up 20 packets of pink Kool-Aid for her to take back with her which she was very excited about. They don’t have that there and she probably drank at least 15 liters of it while she was here. Brittany had to leave early for her leadership meetings and so she woke Carmen up and they said their good-byes. I called Carmen from work and did the same before Angela, Sarah, Kirstyn, Zach, and Ben took her to the mall parking lot to drop her off to go to the airport.
They said their good-byes and Carmen piled into a rented stretch hummer with some other kids to go back to the airport. The rest of the kids rode a bus. Zachary did OK with the good-bye part. He told me he was very sad but he didn’t want to cry. 🙂 Angela said that there were a lot of emotional people there at the drop-off place and said that Carmen was also very sad to leave. She had told us many times that she considers us her family too. What a sweet girl she is. We have really grown to love her like a daughter and sister. We look forward to seeing her again.
From what I understand, they got to the airport just fine but their flight was delayed by 5 hours. Instead of taking off at 4:40 pm, they didn’t take off until 9:23 pm! That will cause some jet lag! 🙁 The flight ended up landing in Madrid at 11:42 am local time which was 4 hours late! Hopefully Carmen was able to find a flight from Madrid home easily!
Tonight I got home from work to a much emptier home 🙁 and took Brittany to her violin lesson. After the lesson finished, the kids had burgers, chicken nuggets and frosties (sorry Carmen, we wish we could have got one for you too!) and Angela and I went out on a dinner date to Zaidi’s (a nice restaurant here in Naperville). We had Pan Roast Alaskan Butter Fish with clams, mussels and scallops and ribeye steak. It was expensive (fortunately we had a gift certificate) but very good.
After we ate dinner, we went and got ice cream at Baskin Robbins, picked up a movie (“Knowing”), and then went home, put the rest kids to bed, and watched it. We didn’t end up going to bed until almost midnight! 🙂
This month has been one of the funnest we have had as a family. We were so blessed to have the experience of having Carmen in our home. We learned a LOT about Spain, she learned a LOT about the United States, and we had wonderful times together that we will never forget. We look forward to keeping in contact with our new daughter and sister (and her family) via e-mail, Skype, Tuenti (Spanish version of Facebook), and hopefully visiting there soon (or her coming to visit us)! We would highly recommend this experience to anyone!
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