There, here and back again..

In a few short days my children and I will be headed back to Egypt. Or, as I like to call it.. The Motherland. We moved to Egypt in 2009 and stayed until February of 2011, just after the revolution was in full swing. It's been a little over two years since my sons have been back. Their father is dying to see the two of them.. he'll never believe how much they've both grown in two short years. We also have an eight month old whom he's never seen beyond our frequent Skype and video messages. Needless to say, it will be a very very emotional reunion.

There's also our Reddah, (our eldest) whom he's also anxious to see, but won't be joining us till later this summer. She will stay behind to finish up the school year with my darling mother, who's also her homeschool learning coach. After a year of giving public school a try (more on THAT later!), we made the decision to homeschool all the kids this year, including Reddah. It seemed more conducive to our beliefs to homeschool, not to mention our gypsy ways. I've come to accept that it must be our lot in life to never stay in the same place for more than a year. Even within the same town or city. We're constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY moving... More on that later.

I was prepared for all of us to pick up and go, then decided it would be best to let Reddah finish out her routine here with her favorite person in the world (her darling grandmother) until I have established a routine in Egypt with the rest of the crew (her brothers and sister) and my favorite person in the world (her darling father). Reddah is an Aspie, so change and the "fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" schedule that we'll encounter when we first arrive would be especially difficult for her... More on that later.

Most of the time I never feel fully "at home" anywhere, even when I'm home (gypsy nature). But, The States are home for me. Most all of my extended family are here, I met my husband here, we married here, launched and ran businesses here, and raised our babies here.. for the most part.

In 2009, we returned to Egypt. My husband is an Egyptian national who though we were married for seven years, was never able to fix his immigration status. Yes, I will divulge more of the details of that later. 

The two years we spent in Egypt were spent moving all over Cairo and north-eastern Egypt, naturally, before returning to home where we've been living for the past two years. So, it's been two years since we've all been in the same room together. Hard for the children especially, but even more so for Moustafa. Up until the revolution he had never been apart from his children for more than a week. Much much more on our revolutionary experience later.

As for myself, I've been back and forth over the past two years working hard on our visa process. And so we wait and wait and wait for his visa to arrive so that we can return again. It's better to wait together than to wait apart. So, we return.