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We arrived in Chicago on Friday morning, twelve hours after we left Kiev, but not too much later local time. We had a great time catching up with Julie's parents, sister, and nephew and my mom over some Chicago deep dish pizza. I was very aware that we had not had pizza, Chinese, or Mexican in over a month, so one of those is checked off now. We got home in time for me to get in on a game night with a few of my closest friends, which was a good way to catch up with them right away.

Saturday we stayed in the house. I forgot how comfortable it is! Living out of suitcases and sleeping in less-than-perfect beds for over a month was starting to get old. We still had plenty of meat and vegetables in the freezer and various carbs in the pantry, and my mom set us up with a gallon of milk, so we didn't need to go shopping right away. Lounging in the living room over coffee gave us a lot of time to talk about what happened and to talk about what our next goals are. We feel surprisingly free; I think we had been for a long time kind of driven by trying to coordinate all the details for this adoption, and now we are back in a place of resting in what God has for us each day.

Sunday morning at church we got to see a lot of people again, and we had a good lunch at Julie's parents place. I'm glad I got back in time for the first NFL weekend. Unfortunately, an intense sore throat set in while I was watching football and pretty much leveled me for the last 24 hours. Julie says it's a classic let-down illness after pushing hard through a big event.

We're expecting to still have things to blog about this week as we sort through photos from the trip and start getting our dossier updated to send to Ukraine again.