Home Sweet Home

We just wanted to update everyone that couldn't make it to the airport and let you know we made it into Minneapolis safe and sound. I was expecting it to be a long, but uneventful day spent packed in an airplane like a sardine; however, it turned out to be one of the more action packed days of our trip. I crashed into our nice comfy bed once we finally made it home.

The day started off wonderfully with us arriving at the Bogota airport three hours before our expected take off time. While waiting in line to check in with four ginormous bags and three carry on pieces of luggage all packed to the brim, an airline attendant asked to weigh our bags on a portable scale. All of the bags were about five pounds overweight, except for one. So, what did we do? We threw all of our carefully packed bags open in the middle of the airport floor, while still in the line to check in, and frantically tried to repack the bags so they'd make it under the magical fifty pound weight limit.

After repacking our bags, we were ready to pay our Colombian "exit tax" and check in for the flight. Except somehow between 4pm Monday when I called the airline to confirm everything and 7am Tuesday when we arrived at the airport, both Julie and Sophia magically disappeared from our flight plan. Despite the fact that I had a printed copy of our flight itinerary, we had to drop everything and visit the airline office to work things out.

The Continental office was a real lesson in patience. There was one woman working at the counter and it took over an hour to fix whatever went wrong. Coming three hours early definitely didn't seem like long enough to get through this. Let's just summarize how painful it was by saying I had to wait 35 minutes while she had some kind of emotional breakdown before she could hand me our final flight stub.

After wrapping up things at the office, we were able to check our luggage and get our boarding passes. While checking our luggage for the flights, security decided to search one of our bags and found it quite suspicious that my electric razor had somehow turned on inside the suitcase. They seemed even more confused on how to turn it back off! After the guard had finished, they took our luggage and never even put it on the scale. All that work for nothing!

For some unknown reason, the Continental representative said she was unable to print our boarding passes for our connecting flight and said we'd have to locate the ticketing counter in Newerk to re-print our boarding passes for Minnesota. With only an hour and a half between flights I knew we were going to be pressed for time, so I kindly persuaded her to find a way to get our luggage and boarding passes printed for the full flight. It must have been my wonderful smile, or the fact that Sophia started having a meltdown because she was able to log into her PC and have all of our boarding passes printed in a matter of minutes.

Luggage was checked and we were finally on our way through the security checkpoints. We started the day at the airport three hours before our flight, and after all of this craziness, we were now being told to hurry to the terminal to make our flight. Yikes! One flight down. One to go.

Upon arriving at Newerk, we rushed through immigration, collected our luggage and quickly made it through customs. After taking the train to the Northwest terminal my heart nearly stopped when we saw it. The security checkpoint from hell. The line stretched for hundreds of feet and snaked from our plane's terminal past coffee shops and around corners all the way to the airport train. If someone can explain why connecting flights have to go through these checkpoints again after just passing through security at customs and immigration, I'd love to hear it!

There was no way we could make it to our flight on time. Our flight left at 5:30, and it was now 5pm and they should have started boarding the plane already. We ran up to the front and cut in front of a thousand people and found another group of people that were flying to Minneapolis. It still took us twenty minutes to get through the checkpoint and we made it to the gate just as they started boarding the plane. Whew...talk about stressful.

Sophia did amazing on both flights. She only had a few moments of fussiness but the change in air pressure didn't bother her at all. She slept for most of the second flight and was ready to get home to meet everyone! We were so excited to finally step off the plane expecting to see the faces of all of our friends and family. Imagine our surprise when we first enterd the baggage claim area to find that no one was there. No family, friends, balloons, cameras or dancing Mariachi bands. We were a bit worried that we sent out the wrong date or time for our flights and it wasn't until we arrived at our baggage claim location that we saw the whole herd of people waiting for us!

It was absolutely amazing to see everyone show up at the airport. Julie's brother Adam captured the homecoming on video (part one, part two).

And just when we thought our day of adventure was over, Northwest "misplaced" two of our big suitcases. Don't worry, they showed up at our place today. (We just ended up staying at the airport a bit longer than we'd anticipated).

When we finally arrived home, it felt so good. We drove up a neatly shovelled driveway and walked into a house that had been fully decorated for Christmas during our absence. A beautiful Christmas tree was lit and four stockings were hanging over the fireplace. Our refrigerator and cupboards were better stocked than when we left and the house had been cleaned! Thanks to all who made our homecoming so special!

As Dorothy says, there's no place like home!