Merry Christmas!

I can't begin to say how great it is to be back in Idaho! I had a great Christmas with Rebecca and Stephen and Sam and Lucy. Very low key and so great. We all stayed in our pj's all day and watched the snow fall. Just perfect!

I made it home from South America on the 23 and I must say it was the worst traveling experience of my life. It consisted of many tears and even more vomit. :) Alex and I left Lima about 7am after spending the night in the airport with no sleep. We were to catch our connecting flight in Panama. When we got to Panama we were at the ticket counter trying to figure out my tickets because they had gotten messed up in Lima and they refused to help us. While at the ticket counter we found out that our plane out of Panama was going to be four hours late. I started crying. Not a single tear, but many, many tears. I was certain I would be spending Christmas alone in an airport somewhere. The woman helping us was great and gave us a free meal, I am sure because of my crying. Note to self: crying gets you a free meal at the airport... I knew that by our plane being so late that we would miss all our connections and make it impossible to get home. So we finally make it onto our plane in Panama. About an hour before hand I was starting to not feel so hot. As soon as they closed the doors on the plane I jumped up and pushed people out of my way to run back to the bathroom where I puked more than I have puked before. This lead to a not so pleasant plane ride home. We made it to Huston where we were put up in a hotel for the night. In the morning our shuttle was late picking us up so we had an hour to check our bags, go through security and make it to our gate. A bit of sprinting was involved but we made it to San Fransciso finally. There I talked with a woman who kept looking at me saying she just didn't know what she could do for me. Not what I wanted to hear. The airport was a zoo with so many flights delayed due to the weather and so many people flying standby for every flight out of there I was certain of my fate... This woman put me on the standby list to Seattle and from there to Spokane. I didn't make it on that flight. I finally got to talk with someone who made me feel like I was the only one with this issue which was what I needed at that time. She put me on another list which wasn't standby, but was one step up from standby and I was the second to the last person who made it on the flight to Seattle with tons of people not making it on. I did have a sense of guilt being one of the ones on the plane. I was able to make it too from Seattle to Spokane that night by the grace of God. When I sat on the plane from Seattle to Spokane I told the man sitting next to me how I wanted to cry when I got my boarding pass for that flight. He looked at me as though I was a bit psycho but if he only knew...

So here I sit now, in Idaho with more snow outside than I have seen in years and with two babies that have grown up so much in the month that I was gone.

I feel like I am home.