america here we come!

wednesday morning (june 1) was a bit sureal. i was so excited to be moving home to the united states, so sad to say good-bye to someone i consider to be like a sister to me and so anxious to know how our day of traveling would unfold...

i woke up at 5am and couldnt fall back to sleep. we i saw sara in the kitchen i instantly just started crying and told her not to look at me. this was going to be hard. it was a rainy day- the perfect weather for a sad farewell.

my next set of tears fell when it was time for tate and nick to say good-bye. we would drop nick off at kindergarten on the way to the airport. he wanted tate to walk him up to his classroom- sara had to go along because i knew i wouldnt be able to stay strong. 

here is the good-bye hug. just look at nick's smile! im sure tate had the same face on the other side too... 

 it was a big production to get us to the airport! not only were we two adults, two kids, two carseats and 5 large pieces of luggage- we had two dogs and two huge crates! so chris was able to borrow a (plumbers) van from work to transport the dogs.

car #2- off we go!

now comes the long story... which i want to keep short, because otherwise i may experience some PTSD. we showed up at the airport 3 hours early for our flight. we were SO prepared. it was going to be a simple day. a direct flight from stuttgart to altanta- i would only need 4 diapers for macy, right?

WRONG.

this is me saying "I HATE YOU DELTA!"

we had done our research about flying with the dogs and knew that usually delta will not transport dogs if it is above 85 degrees. it was rainy and 60 in stuttgart when we left. but- it was supposed to be 94 in atlanta when we arrived. but- there were a few exceptions and we fell into them all, so we were told earlier in the week that we would be fine.

NOT!

delta said there was no way they would fly our dogs that day. there was another military wife traveling that day (alone with her 14 month old child) with her dog too. she was being told the same thing. they kept throwing every excuse at us and i was about to become physically sick at the thought that we had NO ONE to take our dogs until the temp in atlanta fell below 85, which could be in october!

after 4 very painful hours, delta bought us all tickets on KLM (which was a VERY nice airline!) because they had no limits for shipping the dogs. unfortunately we had a 3 hour layover in amsterdam, but we were happy to be finally leaving germany all together! (at one point the plan was for the kids and i to take the delta flight and brian and the dogs would follow the next day on air france... crazy!)

it was a mad rush to get the dogs (and all of us!) through security because the paperwork wasnt completed until 11:45am and our plane was due to depart at 12pm! (mind you, we arrived at the airport shortly after 8am! sigh) our time for tears and hugs was limited because of this rush, but it might have been God's plan for keeping me strong while saying my final good-bye to sara, who stayed with us the entire time at the airport.

during the chaos of this fiasco (at about 10am), i looked over to see a familiar face walking towards us and was shocked to see that tate's litte buddy from kindergarten, niklas, and his family had come to surprise us at the airport! it was such a sweet, kind and thoughtful showing of friendship. i had given them little flight info and they took what they knew and found us! niklas' parents both took the day off work to come see us off. they brought the kids treats for the plane and had special ordered small american and german flags to wave when we left! having them there with us will always be a precious memory for me...

once on the plane, macy wondered "is that stormy barking?"

yup, that's right- our crazy dog barked for 45 minutes during take off and 45 minutes during landing! we were laughing at the fact that we could hear her barking, while also hiding the fact that the annoying dog barking was ours! this was the only funny part of the day...

having had this wild time trying to leave germany, we were so very thankful when we finally touched down in atlanta shortly after 8pm. brian grabbed my hand and i had tears in my eyes. home. we were home.