Day 1 - getting there!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Well, we decided that we all had butterflies in our stomachs when we awoke this morning. It was a blessing to go to church first. We hung out with the Rieder’s after first service while Drew sang into the second service. The plan was to have Ang take Stephen in our van with their kids so that he wouldn’t be the only kid left in the car at the airport when we got there. Drew took us to the airport. We got a quick bite to eat at David’s pizza in the terminal and got on the plane. The kids were thrilled to be on a plane after four years and equally, or more excited to have a video monitor on the seat back ahead of them. We all had a good laugh as we watched the safety video with the woman who, as Cade Sanchez described saying, “Smoking is not allowed on any Delta flight,” as she wagged her finger at you. They were thrilled to watch “Sponge Bob Square Pants,” listen to the MP3 player (which thanks to Daniel’s expertise, was loaded with awesome music) and eat snacks. In Salt Lake City, we had a short layover. Everyone’s stomachs settled a bit but the excitement rose as we thought about seeing Daddy. The next plane didn’t have the video or the woman scolding us not to smoke. As we got closer, Campbell noticed that there was quite a lightening storm going on in the sky which was pretty spectacular. We had to circle the airport three times before we could land because of the storm. They deplaned us onto a people mover and we took a pretty long drive to the terminal…maybe even 5 minutes worth of a drive. The timing was perfect as Daddy had a hard time getting to the airport and was afraid he was going to be late getting...I loved having a cell phone!!! After I made it clear that I got the first hug from Daddy, the kids were jockeying for the position themselves. We met daddy on the way to baggage claim, Daniel honed in on my position…We were able to hop on to the super shuttle for our ride into the city. There were other nice people in the van, including a prison pharmacist from Kentucky, who had a delightful sense of humor and a student from Howard University. Our hotel is very nice. Daddy had set it all up for us: put clothes in drawers, placed pictures around, breakfast food in the fridge and even snacks for us too. We were all pretty tired so we went to bed, thankful to be here.