Home sweet Home

Life has been a whirlwind these past few weeks, from flying home to the U.S. to be on Wheel of Fortune, Christmas, and spending as much time with friends and family as possible to staying up late, trying to cram in all of our favorite eateries and then finally making the long trip back to the Netherlands. I have a few blogs to write about our time at home but for now I'm going to give you a list to summarize our trip home because that's about all I have the energy for now.


1. Flew from KC to Chicago to DC to Amsterdam-fairly uneventful with the exception of having to run to my gate in Chicago and early boarding in D.C.

2. Traveled the whole trip with a styrofoam head in my carry-on bag. Not ONE person flagged it or seemed to want to examine it further. What if it had been a human head?


3. You're probably wondering why I have a styrofoam head in my bag. 


4. Some mysteries are best left unsaid.


5. And Dan got me a supercute hat for Christmas that requires it's shape to be kept, thus the need for the head.


6. We got to meet up with my cousin, Damon Paul, in D.C. and hang out with him for a bit. He is in the military and was heading back to Germany where he is stationed. He is being deployed to Afghanistan in February so we were glad we got to hang out with him a little more.


7. His base is  an old Nazi outpost...kind of crazy.


8. The lady in front of me on our 7 hour flight to Amsterdam kept her seat reclined the ENTIRE time. Made for an uncomfortable flight.


9. We did get to see Social Network on the plane. You know, the one about facebook? I admit, I did feel a little weird about logging into my facebook this evening after watching that.


10. I also watched City Slickers...an oldie but a goodie.
11. When we landed in Amsterdam, a little after 7am it was pitch black out. It was still pitch black when we got on our train..a little after 8am. Welcome to Winter in the Netherlands.


12. We knew we were back in the Netherlands when we got to passport control and stood at the window for 5 minutes before even being acknowledged because the agents were too busy chatting with one another.


13. However, this time we were lucky that they paid us little attention because they did not question us much about my residency permit.


14. In fact, after seeing Dan's, they asked me " and do you have yours?" and my awesome response was "I'm with him. uhh...err I mean he's my husband" and Dan quickly said, "Hers is in process".


15. This is the first time in my life that I hoped our luggage did not make it on the flight with us. Why, you might ask? Well until you try to manuever 4 suitcases and 2 carryons through an airport, to the underground train station, onto a train, through a train station again, to a bus station, on to a bus and then the 200 yards home, you couldn't understand that's why I was hoping it would be lost and that they would have to deliver it to us.


16. As previously stated, we barely made it to the train in the airport because I got stuck in an elevator door. Yep, the door closed on me and my suitcase. Dan and I were running on little patience at this point and he slammed open the door after my feeble attempts to get out weren't working. He said he had this vision of the elevator going back up with me and my suitcase clinging for dear life.


17. With help from some kind people we were able to get all of our suitcases on the train.


18. Those people weren't around when we got off the train. Dan thought I was behind him and he was halfway down the train platform before he realized I was basically rolling my suitcases back and forth because I couldn't get them to roll on the brick.


19. Finally we made it to the bus and collapsed in relief. For 2 seconds until we realized our bus was going the wrong direction. 


20. A bus ride that normally takes us 3 minutes, took us 1 hour. At the end of his regular route the driver turns around and says, "wrong bus?" Yeah, thanks.


21. After making a trip back to Centraal Station and the bus we were on magically turning into a different bus that takes the route we originally wanted, we made it to our stop. Now all that was between us and home was 200 yards of cobblestone and brick street.

22. Imagine this: I am pushing 2 giant suitcases, with a smaller carry on balancing precariously on top of one of them. Dan is wheeling a large suitcase, his carry-on with another bag secured to the top of it and an army bag on his back, which is too top heavy so every once and awhile I see him swaying backwards. Every few steps, I am kicking my suitcase to get it to go over the cracks and crevices of the cobblestones.

23. Dan rushes ahead to drop off his suitcases and comes back to find me stuck in the middle of the street outside of our house. No matter how hard I push or kick, I can't get the suitcases to budge. He swoops in and grabs 2 of the suitcases and we finally make it into our house.


24. And then we collapse into bed and all is right again.