CJs Daddy

Yah, that’s right - she fits in with us pretty well! Of course, you can’t hear it from this picture, but certainly you can imagine.

Not that you can tell from this picture, but we’re home and CJ is sound asleep for her second night in the good ‘ole USA. We’re all here in bed, including both cats, catching up on American Idol (don’t laugh - it’s an entertaining show - and Simon does know what he’s talking about). I foresee myself in this same spot tomorrow as the NCAA tournament kicks off during nap time. We have quite a few pictures and videos - but not nearly as many as our visit trip, considering we didn’t have our pal along.

I also have a lot more details and thoughts about the trip, but I’ll keep the verbiage to a minimum for now. Our trip home captured this entire journey in a nutshell. Plan as well as you can, but have no expectations. Control the things you can, but realize that you’re not in control at all.

We had a long long long day yesterday, leaving on the hotel shuttle at 6AM (8AM in PA), breezed through security, waited a bit for the plane to leave, and headed off at 500 MPH for Dallas.

Two thirds of the way there, we were diverted to Miami as the DFW airport had bee closed due to severe storms. Do you have any idea how much trouble I went through to avoid taking a connection through Miami with their dreaded immigration reputation? Do you have any idea how much trouble I went through to make sure we booked decent seats on American Airlines, rather than Philly’s resident nasty US Air?

Although our worst travel fears were realized, Carmen totally kicked our butts. Whenever I started to act to cynical or frustrated, I’d see her precious face snoozing, or a wide eyes and slight grin at the “bloyng” sound as the fasten seatbelt sight comes on. She didn’t skip a beat when the change in destination (changing a 3 hr or so flight into into a 4.5 hours)  flushed our strategic bottle and eating schedule down the drain. She fell asleep in the snuggly during the long walk to immigration, and stayed there all through the grumpiness of the best and brightest bureacratics in South Florida.

Even after waking up, she hung on to me in that snuggly as we went from line to line as directed by American Airlines, even when we realized we’d missed the most reasonable connection to Philly and Daddy’s frustration began to mount. Yup, she hung out in the world’s greatest invention for parents for a full 2.5 hours. Each time we started to take hour out, we were sent toward another line and realized we’d be walking again. Ugh.

Luckily, our good buddies back in PA gave us the USAir number, which I called while waiting in line at the AA ticket counter. We booked a flight home and headed off for another Miami walk to check in with them. We reached the gate, grabbed some grub and caffeine…

…and headed off into the sunset at 7:30 - literally.

Our ride awaited us, just as promised (goooooo Tia S-ie!!!) and we headed down the highway to our home. Carmen did great in the carseat considering it was her first time, a little fidgetty at times, but fell asleep about half way along the 1 hour 15 min drive. We finally arrived home at 12:30 AM, unwound for a while, and hit the hay at 1:30 or so.

Today, we slept until 9, took a three hour nap (all of us) and confirmed Carmen’s love for books. Finally decided stuffed animals we’re pretty cool, including Snoopy and Eyeore.

That’s enough for now, I’m starting to snooze myself. Here’s hoping the rest of the week continues to go well. Here’s a few more nifty shots from the week…

(she loves to crawl under tables - we’re going to have to be careful with this)

Posted on March 19th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized