Epilogue

Brian and I boarded a flight from Cancun to Los Angeles on the afternoon of March 15th and arrived in Los Angeles with no difficulties.  There was a brief roar of complaints at the immigration and customs area in LA when the officials moved people from one line to another, resulting in the people at the back getting through the process before the people who were originally at the front of the line.  It was nothing compared to our immigration experience when arriving in Cancun ten days prior.  We took a shuttle from LAX to our hotel and had a decent night's sleep before returning to the airport on the 16th to fly back to Redding.

Again, no problems with the flight and we arrived in Redding, picked up our car at my sister's home then headed north to Yreka where we were to meet my parents and the boys at my grandparents' home.

When we walked through Gram and Pop's door Sam was bouncing on my mom's knees and Ben was playing in one of the bedrooms.  It wasn't until Sam turned, looked at me for a moment, then exclaimed, "Mommy!" that I realized how much I really missed the boys.  He ran into my arms and it was all I could do not to crush him in my embrace.  When tears sprang to my eyes I just squeezed harder.  Ben was happy to see us too and was talking a mile-a-minute about his adventures at Grandma and Grandpa's.  Both boys looked so different to me, older, bigger, and somehow more independent.

We celebrated Gram's birthday by going to a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner (what irony) with Uncle Ray and Aunt Annie then spent the night at Gram and Pop's before continuing on to Tahoe on the 17th.

Once we were home we learned that Dave and Sarah's flights were as uneventful as our own. 

It took several days to get back into the swing of everyday life.  Brian had been at work less than one full day and came home nauseous and sick.  It took the entire weekend to really get him feeling better.  All we can guess is that the shock to his system of multiple immunizations, malaria pills, probiotics, etc. was finally catching up with him.

We had dinner with George and Irma in the couple weeks following our trip to "debrief" and learned that the people of Yo Creek enjoyed us visiting and said that they thought we had fun.  They were concerned most with what we thought of all of them.  Our answer to George and Irma was that we have rarely met so many people who are all so friendly and helpful and are anxious to go visit again.