many miles

hnl-sea (honolulu-seattle)
sea-msp (seattle-minneapolis)

after almost 12 hours of travel time, i made it back to minnesota. home.

have you ever taken a red eye flight and thought it would be easy to sleep since it's an overnight flight? i had high hopes for my flight from honolulu to seattle since i didn't leave until 9:40pm. i even had a window seat so i thought i'd be able to get comfortable enough to sleep most of the flight. things started off well - i was out before we left the ground. but about 10 mins into the flight i woke up and couldn't fall back asleep.. was wide awake. i started thinking about how tired i should feel and realized something. was there caffeine in that strawberries and creme frappuccino i had at starbucks?? that would explain my inability to sleep. i thought for sure that's what kept me awake, but to satisfy my theory, i just looked up the nutritional data on the frappuccino and it actually does not have caffeine, it's just strawberries and milk. hm. guess i just wasn't tired. so i watched 2 episodes of parenthood and eventually dozed off. we landed in seattle at 6:15am, just enough time for me to deplane, use the bathroom in the airport, and board my 7am flight to minneapolis.

during the 10 mins i was in seattle, i had flashbacks to the last time i flew home from hawaii. i was with grandma and anita, grandma and i flew on standby and got stuck in seattle for hours and hours. every 2 hours another flight would leave for minneapolis and because we were "non rev" we kept getting bumped. finally, at 11pm we got a hotel room near the airport and tried again the next morning. thanks to deanna, we got on a mid morning flight home. thankfully that didn't happen this time because i was ready to be home.

mom picked me up from the airport, we stopped to see grandma and grandpa's new place in burnsville, stopped by blue ox, split a sandwich and headed home.

sheba was happy to see me.

i was happy to see rob. :) during the past several weeks, he kept me company by phone and this picture, but seeing him in person is much preferred. he came over after work, we went on a walk around the neighborhood and went to the chart house for dinner. we lucked out and had our favorite waitress, brittany. she didn't even have to fight for us this time (one of the last times we were there, she traded tables with another waitress so she could be our person)! the turkey club was just as good as we'd hoped and we left very satisfied.

happy to be home,
jill