It's cold here!

Well we have made it home to Portland safe and sound. The last 24-36 hours have been long... come to think of it when did I sleep last? I think we are trying to stay up for another 3 hours to adjust to the NW timezone.

Monday was a busy day... filled with more goodbyes :-( We headed to Ben Gurion Airport around 6:30ish which gave us plenty of time to drop off our luggage, return the rental car, check in, and get through security. We were grateful for the light crowds at the airport. Ken had three seats to himself on the plane, and I had two (which worked great for me). I think Ken was able to sleep quite a bit, but I was preoccupied with ensuring I got up to move around every hour so I didn't sleep at all on the 13 and half hour flight to Atlanta. I chatted with the flight attendants in the galley and watched a few movies to keep myself busy (too dark to read a book). I usually hate using the bathrooms on airplanes, but there was no avoiding it. I think I hold a record for 9 visits in one trans-Atlantic flight! After about 10 hours I started to think I was going to go stir crazy. I moved back to Ken's row and sat with him for the duration of the flight. We were very excited when we landed in Atlanta.... US soil.... we are home! Customs was not an issue and we had a very short layover before beginging the final leg of the flight, 5 hours to PDX. Ken's frequent flyer status got us one upgrade to first class which I was able to take advantage of. It's nice up there with real silverware and hot breakfast! Again I tried to keep myself entertained by reading and watching movies.

My mom and little brother (can I call him that at 27?) were there to meet us off the airplane. It was so nice to see them. It's a bit cold here, but you could see the sun barely peaking through the clouds. It's nice that it wasn't pouring down rain! We were only able to find 5 of our 6 bags at the luggage carrousel... why is this always happening to us? There was another bag that looked very similar to our, but wasn't. We decided to pull it off and call the contact number on the bag, perhaps they took ours instead of theirs? Sure enough they were already 15 minutes down the road to their home in Salem, but agreed to come back to the airport when I told them one of their bags was still at the airport. I'm glad we reached them, after 24 hours of traveling chasing down luggage is not the first thing we wanted to be doing.

Hoping to catch up with each of you soon. We are in the process of getting phones setup so send us an email in the meantime.