Surprise!

The past week (almost) has been amazing! Aaron and I decided a few days after Christmas that it was a good time for my visit home. So on January 7, I boarded a plane with "Uncle Vinny", Andrew, and Kayla for the flight from Germany back to the states. That was probably one of the longest days of my life. We boarded the plane at 1:30 Germany Time. We landed in Chicago at 5 pm Chicago time, or 12 am Germany time. Our flight was originally scheduled to depart Chicago at 8:00 pm(3 am). We stood in line at customs for a few minutes, dreading what seemed like would be a very long wait as the line was outrageous. However, I quickly noticed a line for military ID card holders that had maybe 3 people in it. We were through customs in no time. Next we had to pick up our bags, go through customs again, and re-check our bags for the flight into Nashville. By the time we were able to do this, we had been in Chicago for 2 hours! We were starving to boot. Somewhat luckily, our flight was delayed until 9:00pm (4am) We went to Chili's and tried to watch some of the Alabama Texas BCS bowl championship, but it didn't work out so well. By the time our flight actually left, we had been moved to 3 different gates, and sat on the plane for 45 minutes. It was midnight(7am) when we arrived in Nashville. I had officially been awake for 24 hours since I didn't sleep during my flight time. I was up until 6 am (1pm) before finally getting to sleep thanks to Kayla staying awake because of the jet lag.

Our arrival in Nashville, however, was very exciting. It was a complete surprise for my entire family. My mom started screaming and crying when she saw us, my dad just grabbed Kayla and hugged and kissed her all over. I have missed them immensely. Friday we slept, Saturday we were having a big family get together and surprising them with our attendance. The weather had other plans. So we called everybody playing coy about what was going on, some people figured it out very quickly, others took quite a bit of time. It was quite funny. My aunt Suzi didn't believe that we were here and hung up on my dad because he was playing such a cruel joke. The weather got a little better, Missy, Amanda, and Lilly were able to make it out to visit for a while. Sunday morning, Big Nan Nan brought breakfast, eggs, bacon, orange juice, raspberry danish coffee cake. He wasn't able to stay very long but Kayla was very excited to see him. I was sick the rest of the day, it was horrible.

Monday was uneventful, Tuesday was full of fun. We went to Farmers Market for lunch. PSA Stay away, now that the chinese food place is gone from there the food leaves lots to be desired. After lunch we went to AC and Boo's to play. It turned into another huge party, Cari, Mack, Helen, Pinky, Joseph, Big Nan Nan, Miss BB, Missy, Amanda, Me, Nan Nan, Kayla, Boo, and AC all visited together until about 6.

No plans as of yet for today.