04 July 2009

Home Sweet Home

We made it! Yay!  We are so glad to be back in the US and with family and friends.  However, it was no easy task to get here.  Here is a quick summary of our trip home...

Instead of  taking the train, we got a taxi to take us to our hotel just steps away from the airport in Manchester.  We had 3 large suitcases, 2 small suitcases, a double stroller, a backpack, a computer bag, Caroline's backpack and a few other items in tow.  Oh yeah, let us not forget the 2 small children!  We made it to the ticket counter to check in.  Amazingly, only one suitcase was overweight.  The extra three pounds cost about $150.  This was a lot for just three pounds, but Chad and I were thankful because we truly expected all the bags to be overweight.

The plane ride from Manchester to Atlanta was a little over 8 hours long.  Tucker slept for not quite 2 hours and Caroline didn't close her eyes once!  Instead, she found a boyfriend sitting in front of us.  He was about 5 and enjoyed her antics.  When he took a nap she wandered up a few rows and found a new friend to sit with.  She ended up sitting with this little girl and her mom for about 30 minutes.  During this time, she told them that her name was Paige which is actually her middle name.  We were very excited to finally arrive in Atlanta because the kids were ready to get off the plane!  They needed space and so did we.

Thankfully, the trip through customs went smoothly and all our luggage made it.  We found our gate in Atlanta, got some ice cream, changed a few diapers and waited for our plane that would take us to Norfolk.  Our flight ended up being delayed about 20 minutes.  The kids were exhausted and slept the whole way to Norfolk.  Once we got to Norfolk and retrieved the double stroller we noticed there was a problem.  Apparently the crew was a little too rough with the gate-checked stroller and bent two of the wheels.  The only good thing about this was the fact that it happened at the very end of our trip when we no longer needed the stroller.  We would have been in big trouble if this had happened on the way to England.

Four of the five bags made it to Norfolk with the promise that the missing bag would be delivered to the house the next day.  At this point it was about 7:30 pm in Virginia, but it felt more like midnight to our bodies.  Caroline went to sleep as soon as we got home, but Tucker was happy to hang out for a few minutes while we located our pajamas and toothbrushes.  By now it was more like 3 am to our bodies.  We were all wide awake at 5:30 am on Thursday with lunch following at 9:30 am.  Clearly it was going to take some time to readjust.  No worries...we were just happy to be home!

1 comment:

Jenny said...

Glad you trip back was relatively uneventful!