Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Never-Ending Days

The day started off at 12:00am as it usually does. Unusual was the fact that we would not be sleeping. Oliver was able to fall asleep and snuggled peacefully on daddy's lap. The 36 hour journey begins as the plane floats softly into the air.

It is a curious thing how traveling a span of 1.5 days over multiple time zones affects one's memory or sense of time in general. Even now, I am still trying to figure out where we were at what time and how long it took. It felt as though we were simply being herded from one day to another in an endless daze, yet skipping large parts of time which should have been accounted for. So although we left at 12:30am, and supposedly only four or five hours, we arrived in Minnesota and suddenly the world around us thought it was a fine time to wake up.

We called my brother and waited for his arrival (oh the perks of living close to an airport...just wait). We weren't sure if we had time to find a coffee stand, so we decided against it (although our bodies craved it...or did they crave sleep?). Jon pulled up the familiar van and opened the door to reveal a lovely space...with no car seats. Hmm...in a matter of hours we would be toting Ollie around the African city with no seat belts, let alone car seats. But here we were in America. We just couldn't do it. SO...Josh stayed with Ollie while Jon and I drove back for little Charis' seat. (Now is when living close REALLY comes in handy).

Eventually, we all made it back to his house for a nice 6 hour break. Now six hours, when you haven't seen your brother and his family for a year, is not much...but we took what we could get and filled it with all we could: a tour of his school, a walk to the grocery store for the fixings of a great lunch, and of course, conversation. I also made my last call to the boys before we flew "out of range." No need to worry about them...what could be better than Grandma's house!

The time went quickly, but goodbyes were eased by the knowledge that we would see them in a month when they came for a visit.

So...we entered the airport once again to continue the rest of the "day". On to Amsterdam.

To be continued...

3 comments:

Eyes_Wide_Open said...

I'm so glad you're writing it down.

Sheri said...

Just enough to grab my attention but not enough to ease the anticipation!
I'm loving it, continue on!!!!

The Arthurs said...

O this is so wonderful to read and I can't wait for more! :)