Melvin's Homecoming

Oh Goodness, it has been forever since I got a chance to blog! A lot has changed since my last blog as most of you know! Melvin is home!!! I am so happy to have him back. The spent apart and not knowing how long we would be apart was killing me. Here's the details of Melvin's homecoming:
Friday 9/14/2012
One of my best friends and I went to a baby/kids sale at a church. We found a great kitchen for just $40 so we bought it. Later I went back to put it in my car around 4ish. I had to take it apart and it was not an easy task! The entire time I was thinking of how Melvin could do this in like 5 seconds and how I wished he was here to help me and how much I was hating immigration at the moment. I got a call from an unknown number which I ignored because I was taking apart the kitchen and I never answer unknown numbers. It called again. And I by some miracle I answered. "Is Mrs. Banegas there?" Right away I knew it was important because no one really calls me by "Mrs. Banegas." "This is she." "We are trying to release your husband do you think you can come get him?" I almost cried I was so happy! I said of course and we worked it out that I would go get him the next day since Jenna LA is 7-8 hours away and since I had Allie I couldn't just take off at that second. I immediately had to call everyone and let them know. Allie was with my Nana so I got to tell her in person which I thought was perfect because she was the person who was with me when I found out Melvin had been picked up.
Saturday 9/15/2012

I had to be up at and the road on by 4A.M at the latest. I had to be in Jenna LA by 1. I ended up leaving at 3:30A.M. Being on the road that early is not easy...at all! Especially because almost all of the highway lights were not on. I had to stop several times and get some form of caffeine. Melvin would try to call me every hour just to keep me awake. I also called Samantha because I knew she had Habitat for Humanity at 7 that morning so she would be awake. Once the sun came out it was much easier to keep going. The 40mins-1hr of the drive is complete farm land. The Lasalle Facility where was held was in the middle of nowhere. I passed the turn/driveway of the place because the road was so narrow and looked abandoned. The building is huge and intimidating. I have no idea how he still had his sanity intact. I got there at about 11:30 so I thought I would have to wait. Once I finally got through the gates he was already waiting for me. I wanted to tackle him. We got out easily. All I had to do was give them my license. We did not have to pay a bond which is a miracle because most people have to pay $5,000+. As soon as we got out we embraced and then got in the car as quick as we could to get out of there. We stopped to get him so real food because the food was really gross where he was. At the classy restaurant of Popeye's, we got a lot of glares. As I said we were in the middle of the country and they are apparently not welcoming to interracial couples but even that could not ruin our happiness of being together. We were both kind of in a daze, like we couldn't believe this had happened to us. We drove for about 4 hours but then stopped at a motel in Mississippi because I was so sick of driving. The sketchy motel was in a sketchy small town. I mean the Walmart across from our hotel closed at 11P.M! But sketchy motels are always exciting to me so I was OK with it. We planned to leave at about 10 or 11 the next morning since we never get to sleep in.

Reunited

LaSalle

Sunday 9/16/2012

We both woke up at 6A.M because it was so cold and then we couldn't get back to sleep. So we got ready and went to eat the free breakfast at the motel. We are on the road by 7:45AM. We got to Hoover by about 11 or 11:30. The first thing we did was go get Melvin a haircut because it had grown so much in 5 weeks. Then we went home and Melvin finally got to see Allie. She was a little shy at first but then she eventually warmed up to him and went straight into his arms. We were playing in the den for a while and then Melvin started crying because Allie had gotten so big. Melvin never ever cries so of course this was like heart breaking to us. But we were so so so so happy that he was home with us!

Saturday 9/22/2012
We had a welcome home party for Melvin and it was a huge hit! We had about 25 people come and we cooked out and had all kinds of food. It was so sweet to see all the people that cared for Melvin!
Tuesday 10/2/2012
We had to check into immigration so that they could see that Melvin was not trying to run or anything. The building is this creepy building behind all these abandoned buildings in Homewood. When we got there it took forever to find the office. When we finally found it the guy was very nice and gave us another check in date for 2/13/2013. We are taking that as a good sign for his court date on 11/06/12 since they gave a check in date much later than that.

Well that's most of the story! I will try to get on the write another post about just normal life! :)