Leavin' on a jet plane

Sorry, this is going to be long, but at least it's filled with pictures as well as lots of words! :) And while you read this, I'm on a plane coming home. I'm pretty excited.

These last few weeks have just flown by while we've been busy playing with family and having a lot of fun. There are always lots of laughs when we all get together, and I wouldn't have missed it! I'm just hoping that we aren't at this moment repeating the craziness that was our flight out here.

First of all, I knew it was going to be a challenge to have the three of us (Eli, West and I) in two seats for a five hour flight. But then throw into the mix the businessman that nearly turned green when he saw that we were his travel mates, and the stress level was bumped up a few notches. Then once the flight was going, Eli was much more behaved than West! (I was actually expecting West to be the easier one.) So I had to try and contend with making bottles while worrying about taking up too much seat room and hoping that West doesn't make too much noise while also trying to keep Eli from kicking the seat in front of him.

But the worst part was once we actually got to Cleveland! Here we are, landed, and it's raining outside. Okay, we can handle a little rain, right? Wrong. We taxi to our gate and are literally 20 feet from the terminal when the pilot gets on and says we have to stop and wait because they have this sensitive weather equipment that's telling them there is a possibility of lightning. Yeah, that's right, there's not any actual lightning, just a possibility of it, so they don't want anyone outside working the ground right now. He doesn't know how long we'll be there nor can we take off our seat belts to get up and walk around. Nevermind that we've already been in the air for 5 hours and my 4-month-old is soaking wet on my lap and needs a change badly (of course there's nowhere to do that on an airplane).

So an hour later, the airport finally gives the go-ahead and we drive 4 seconds to the terminal where we can start disembarking the plane. By this point I was pretty much done. Luckily I got to get out, change West, and finally meet my mom and Jeff. It was nice to just have someone come up and say, "Here, let me take your things and you just rest!" So thanks, Mom, for getting me at the airport and letting me just relax, like I hadn't been for the last 6 hours. :)

So yeah, like I said, I hope we don't have any kind of repeat of that situation. But luckily this time our flight will be at about 5pm, so the boys will be pretty worn out from the day (I hope) and so there will be lots of sleeping, methinks. (Knock on wood just in case.)

Here are some more fun pictures for now, until I can get home to really edit them! :)

Nana, Grandpa, and the grandkids.
We were so excited to get pictures of them all together.
And this one is with no head swaps and everyone is looking! A miracle! :)

Cute little Aidan! He looks exactly like Emily, it's so funny.

Eli had these 3-D chalk glasses on all afternoon, he just loved them.

Jeff pitching at his baseball game. We had a lot of fun watching him play! He's always been a good athlete.

All in all, it was a great trip! But I'm sure I'll be glad to sleep in my own bed tonight. I'm just not looking forward to all the actual work I'm going to have staring me in the face tomorrow morning! So if I don't emerge for a while, that's why. :)