"Our dash" is back!!

All other news pales in comparison around here! So we'll dedicate an entire post to the freshest and most exciting of updates! On Sunday evening KALI drove Jason, Terah and Alida over the mountain to the Charlottesville Airport to pick up TALA! And then she escorted them all home. I lingered on the off chance the mama I'm next accompanying in birth went into labor - I didn't want to be over an hour away! As it turned out, I could have gone along (still waiting on that little one to decide it's time to join the rest of us out here!). But we couldn't all fit in our car and pick up an additional person anyway.

The long and eagerly anticipated moment arrived! 

The excitement was building all day as the girls made a welcome sign and asked multiple times (especially Terah) how long until it was time to go pick her up. We are trying to catch up on hugs from the last 8+ months and put some in the "hug bank account" for the months ahead. I am not sure how many time zones Tala has traversed in that last while but it's been a lot (including going both directions on time!!) - I'm not sure if her body has quite caught up to the Eastern Time Zone here. But she's with it enough to get back into Rook and Dutch Blitz - I don't think they were home an hour before the Rook cards came out...

One little chick decided to hatch earlier than all the rest to welcome her home too! It hatched right as the girls and Jason were off to the airport. Many others followed that one so at least she had the company of the chicks hatching/peeping in the background on her first night back at Tangly Woods!!

We haven't even started scratching the surface on catching up just yet. The focus so far has been trying to catch up on rest and sleep and hugs and fit some games in the cracks here and there. So glad we have over a month together, so don't have to cram the catching up in here at the start!

As Jason and I were outside weeding this morning, I was noting two things - first that I sometimes have to remind myself that Tala is back in her room upstairs and at other times find myself feeling surprised how quickly it just went back to feeling normal to hear her voice and laughter in the background. It felt like both a long and a short 8 months.