There and Back Again
On Thursday, we left for a long weekend to fly home for my 10-year high school reunion. I’m amazed that we managed to squeeze so much into the three days we were in the US!
It was fun to have a chance to catch up with so many people in such a short time!
So what all did we manage to do with our 3 days Stateside?
We left home at 4am to catch the first train to the airport (for a 6:30 flight), which put us on the ground in Chicago a little after 1pm. First up was an afternoon with Shane to eat cupcakes and watch Evie do tricks. Evie wasn’t in a performing mood, but she was cute nonetheless. I don’t think I’m ready to have kids, since I was swooning more over Nala the adorable cat than Evie the adorable baby. I was glad to have the chance to catch up and realized how much I miss Shane’s witty-but-obscure culture references.
Next up was an evening with Katie and Tim. Shane dropped us off at Katie’s job, and we headed out to the suburbs to have dinner at their place. Although I tried to stay neutral in the dinner plan discussions, I was quite excited, since Tim is a trained chef and dinner at their place is always a treat! A long commute gave him plenty of time to work and us plenty of time to chat in the car. Just as we were reaching their place, a pretty big thunderstorm rolled in, and I enjoyed listening to the thunder and watching the lightning (since big thunderstorms are relatively rare in Oslo). Dinner was extraordinary, and Tim served a great Oregon pinot noir (my favorite). Unfortunately, after dinner I started having trouble staying awake, since I’d been up for over 24 hours with only a few hours’ nap on the flights.
The next morning we headed to the airport for a quick flight to Indianapolis. Dad met us at the airport but explained that Mom was at home with the plumbing guys, because something had gone wrong with the well and they had no water. I was disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to spend our shopping day with us. We started at Fry’s, but they didn’t have the motherboard Lucas wanted to buy for the gaming machine, which also meant scrapping the new video card and processor. We did, however, happen to find a magnifying lamp that Mom has been wanting for years, so we bought it for her birthday. The next stop was the mall, where we got lunch, some new clothes for Lucas, and a pair of shoes for me. By the time we reached home, it was nearly time to leave for the reunion, so we grabbed clothes and cosmetics and headed over to Erin’s to borrow the shower, swoon over the new baby kitties, and get a ride to Indy.
The reunion was fun, but in true high-school fashion, people tended to separate off into their traditional groups. I guess it’s unavoidable, since 3 hours only gives enough time to catch up with your friends. Some people mingled a lot more, and most people were very friendly and social, so we did talk to quite a variety of people. I particularly enjoyed catching up with Kara and seeing some of my old art classmates, but the high point was a long conversation with Kate and Erin with reminiscences way back to grade school.
Saturday morning I woke up early thanks to another beautiful (but loud) thunderstorm. We had some time in the morning to hang out with Mom & Dad before heading off to all the renion-weekend parties. After another shower at the Browders’ (and more time playing with the baby kitties), we all headed down to Bloomington together to meet up with Brad, Jason, et. al. at Nick’s house for lunch, baby-watching, and Wii. Our burgers proved a little unusual when we realized that the cheese slices were separated by very thin paper that we’d all put it in our sandwiches. I wasn’t the only one who had actually taken a few bites out of it before noticing!
Returning to Franklin, we were off to Lee Ann’s to see her, Stacy, Brandy, and more babies. This was my first visit to her house, and I actually drove past it thinking, “Oh, look! Someone built a new house there,” before checking the house numbers and finding out that was actually her house. We didn’t get to stay very long, because we were due back at the Browders’ for dinner (Fondue - yum! Baby kitties - cute!).
I stayed up packing my suitcases with all of our new online purchases, and on Sunday morning, we headed up to Grandma’s. The original plan was for the family to all come to us, but the water outage made hosting lunch too difficult. This meant that we had to skip our planned quick-trip to the county fair on the way to the airport (the only thing we had to cancel all weekend). My Aunt Bev & Uncle Jack were in town from Birmingham, and we had a nice time catching up with everyone. I also took the opportunity to test out my new laptop with Uncle Ken (Mom & Dad’s de facto tech support).
Eventually it was time to head to the airport, and after a quick and painless check-in, we ran into the Browders’! Erin & Mike’s flight was delayed, so we got to spend some more time with them while we waited for our flights. We played multi-player Cooking Mama on the three DS machines and decided that I need one too (it’s ordered, and Erin will hopefully bring it in a few weeks).
We boarded on time, but our flight was delayed on the tarmac, cutting our O’Hare layover down to 20 minutes. It wasn’t a problem since our Atlantic flight was also pushed back half an hour. Also, we arrived at gate H14, and the Frankfurt flight was departing out of H15! How often does that happen?! (I could have sworn the flight attendant said K15, so we did start running the wrong direction until we found a departure monitor to check the gate assignment.)
We reached home around 4 in the afternoon. It was too late to head to work, so I did something I never do: I unpacked. I usually finish unpacking as I pack for our next trip, so this was a big accomplishment for me. Everything is put away, the luggage is stowed, and the new Skype phone is assembled and running. Woo hoo!
Overall, it was a very productive and enjoyable weekend!