Finally home.....

.....just 12 hours later than we were supposed to be.

Wouldn't you know it. We missed our flight in New York. Granted, even if we had been on time, our flight had already been cancelled due to....I don't know what.

Our journey started out great. We left our grubby apartment at 8:00. It was quite snowy, so we were glad to have the extra time.

By 8:45 we were at the airport. Check-in went well. Other than the fact that our little family was to be seated in three different rows. They did get us re-seated, but they weren't overly happy about it.

Through security. Again. What a drag with three children.

We made it to our gate and boarded the plane without a hitch.

Once on the plane we had to sit a little while so they could de-ice the wings. Comforting.

Off we went....headed to the US of A.

Ten hours later, we touched down.....and Jack Nickolay was officially a US citizen!!!!!

The children do so unbelievably well travelling. I hate to brag on my own children, but I guess somebody has to do it. Seriously. They do so well. After walking miles and miles and miles, they sit for ten hours on a plane. With no toys. Yeah. Their mom forgot to stick toys in the carry-on bags. JN does well also. He slept. He ate. He sat and sucked his thumbs. He loves to travel.

Touch down in New York was about 30 minutes late. We booked off the plane and raced down the hall toward passport control. The line was long and there was only one little line open. Handy when you have a flight to catch.

Finally, they opened a couple more lines and we were raced down to line 28. Only to wait in line for 10-15 minutes while they were trying to get JN's passport to read. Finally, after scanning the strip over and over with no results, he started to punch in any and all numbers he could find in the passport. It worked. The right number was finally found and we were escorted to the little room.

Immigration. It was a cinch. We put our documents on a desk and sat while some fella stamped them and gave JN's passport back to us.

Off we raced....only to find out that our flight was cancelled (we were too late anyway) and we had to catch the 7:10 flight to Atlanta.

Great! That also meant that we missed our last flight from Atlanta to home for the night. Not so great.

We made it to Atlanta about 11:00 and there we stayed until 8:45 this morning. Ever spent the night in an airport? It's not an overly good way to get great rest. The children slept well. We bedded them down on tables and they slept til about 5:30 this morning.

The rest of us stretched out on chairs and caught however many cat naps that we could. We didn't feel too bad all things considered.

At 8:45, off we went. Homeward bound. Bummer for us, the brakes on the plane had a problem and there we sat. For nearly an hour.

The brakes were finally fixed (we hoped) and we took off.

Touched down at home about 11:00. Rejoicing was abundant.

We were met at the airport by some lovely family and friends. They will never know just how much we loved to see some familiar faces at the end of our long journey home.

From the airport we headed straight to our house. Not to live, of course, but to choose the color for our floors.

Welcome back to reality.

And now. It may be a while til I'm back in the loop here again. But. I shall return. Hopefully by the end of next week, the posts will resume in full force......

And......then will come the giveaway.

Stay tuned.