After getting Sonja safely on a return flight to the States in the early morning Saturday, I began to think through what was the best thing for the rest of our family.  Should the kids and I stay in Chad?  Should we return immediately?  Or, should we delay and find out how her checkups go and then make a decision?  After talking with doctors and colleagues, the answer became quite clear.

This baby’s birth and early life is most likely going to be a process of decisions and required NICU support to live.  So, after writing to let our family and friends know what was happening, I contacted our travel agent and asked how soon were tickets available for our family to return.  Amazingly, he wrote back and asked, “Can you leave tonight?”  In a span of about 4 hours and with the help of our dear friends Dave and Rachael, we headed to the airport to catch a late Saturday night flight, just 18 hours behind Sonja.

We traveled via Istanbul.  Here are the kids on the escalator early Sunday morning:

Sahara was a little under the weather and tired in general from the travel, so she decided to take advantage of the time I was spending picking up boarding passes at the transfer desk like this:

This in turn attracted a number of Turkish Airlines employees’ attention…to take pictures:

What a showoff!  We moved onto Washington D.C., where we quickly passed through immigration, and boarded a late night Sunday flight to Minneapolis and arrived around midnight.  We are looking forward to seeing Sonja tomorrow!