WE MADE IT!

Whoa, what a trip. I'd say we are pretty darn good at the traveling and the being in airports and airplanes and dealing with the stresses that come along with traveling, but boy today tested us.

The morning went well, took everything in us to get up for breakfast at 830. EVERYTHING, Our bodies were already starting the I'VE HAD ENOUGH and I am shutting down process" We have been moving nonstop for the past two months and the past 3 weeks have been crazy and the past 1 week was pretty much psychotic. Somehow we had mustered up enough energy to keep us going and Wednesday we felt like we were hanging off a cliff and our forearms started to give and we just had to hold on as long as we possibly could. Didn't think we would make it a few times, but we did.

We went to breakfast, got ALL packed up, and checked out. Fayne met us at the hotel and the three of us went and ate lunch and it was nice to sit for a little bit before the flights. She is a massage therapist and before we left she gave Michael a short little shoulder/neck massage which he was grateful for. He said it helped him relax for a short time. (you'll see why a short time and not a long time in a moment). Then we said our goodbyes, which were hard, but I forced myself to wear a happy and strong face otherwise I'd never leave.

Now starts the "fun" and I mean that in the most sarcastic way possible. We decided our best option was to take the rental car to the arrivals parking lot, grab our 4 suitcases and leave our carryon in the rental car and get checked in. Our flight was suppose to leave at 5:50 PM and we got to the airport about... 2:00. About 4 hours ahead of time. And I am GLAD we did. We stood in line for a good hour (which we were sweating about because we were in 1 hour parking but we parked kinda far from the ticket counter and we both had to be there to check in) As we are standing in line for about an hour we are overhearing lots of stuff about how most of the flights to chicago are either canceled or delayed like crazy. We got to the counter and learned our flight was delayed till 9:00pm and later found out it was canceled!! The guy at the ticket counter put us on the 323 flight, which at the time was about 20 minutes away, but it was delayed until 5:30 so that worked out great! We then drove to the rental car place and turned in the car, and got back to the airport where we had a little time to sit. We got on the plane but were well advised we would be sitting on it about 2 hours before we took off. Not too bad because they played a movie and well when we are use to being on anywhere from 8 to 14 hour plane flights, an extra 2 hours on a 2 hour flight was child's play for us. We were delayed because of air traffic. We were happy to see we had emergency exit row seats so we had a good 3 feet of leg room in front of us. The flight was by far one of the bumpiest we have ever been on, but didn't bother us at all. but still, really bad turbulence most of the way. Not like a little turbulence either, big big turbulence. When we got to Chicago we had 40 minutes to get to the other side of the airport and get back through security. Keep in mind the Chicago airport is HUGE. so we had a couple "Home Alone" moments where we were running through the Chicago airport all decorated for Christmas trying to catch our flight. (remember that scene) We missed the train to get us to the other terminal and had to sit and wait about 10 minutes for another one.When we got to security, the guys were saying anyone flying SAS to Copenhagen in this line, so we were able to shuffle to the front and get through easily. Anyways, we get to the gate and they are just starting to board, we already were checked in from Dallas we just had to show them our passports. We got on the plane and about collapsed. I had forgotten how much we LOVED Scandinavian Airlines. I don't know why we would ever fly anything else. The plane of course was MASSIVE (I LOVE the big mamba jamba planes! they are so huge and amazing to just look at) We had the individual TV screens and all sorts of other fancy stuff that other airlines don't offer even in their biggest fleet. The SAS flight was perfect. We had a row in the middle of the plane, but we were the only two in the row so we had 4 seats all to ourselves. We slept... ALOT! It was like our bodies both finally let go of that cliff we were hanging on to by our pinkies at this point and let ourselves fall.

I love flying internationally so much more then domestically. They feed you.. good food. They encourage you to get up and walk around as often as possible while domestically, they encourage you to always stay seated ALWAYS. And while the flights are so much longer, they are usually more comfortable.

Anyways, we landed, got ALL our luggage (our suitcases were the 1st three out and the 4th one came out just a few pieces later), got a taxi to the hotel, went to find a bite to eat at one of our favorite cafes in the city had a beer and meandered back to the hotel. Michael crashed about 6:30, and me about 715-730. I actually don't remember the exact time. We got up this morning about 5 and couldn't possibly sleep anymore.

Today Michael is already at his first day of work, and I'm trying to catch up on all my emails that I haven't written for the past 3 weeks and try to convince my friends that I'm not a bad friend for not getting back to their questions and such sooner. I can tell not having much to do is going to take some getting use to. I feel like I have a billion things to do, when the fact of the matter is... I don't have anything of any importance to do, but recuperate! I just have to make some sense of this hotel room. Not too much sense though, we are moving to a Jr suite in a couple days. Yippee!

More later!