It makes me so happy to be back home! However...we did have a really fun vacation.

We finally few in to Ramstein Airbase yesterday at 11:00 am after days and days of being stuck in Dover, Deleware. I'll get to that story at the end of this post.
We had so much in California for three weeks! Soaking in the sunshine was amazing, spending time with family was so much fun, and going to Kelly's wedding was absolutely beautiful.


Here's Hallie and I kissing Germany goodbye, getting ready for take-off.
This is the cargo plane that we flew on. Loved this flight. The kids had all this space to get to run around and have fun as we flew.

This is where we had to sit for take-off and landing. The little girl next to Hallie is Anabella. We met her and her mom on the flight and her and Hallie were fast friends. It was nice for Hallie to have someone to play with for all that flying time. They were on our flight coming back to Germany too. I'll get to that later.....

Chase spent a lot of time flying in his carseat. It was just easier to have him contained, and he would fall asleep easier when he was restrained. :)

Hallie's sleeping arrangement. We brought our sleeping bag and some pillows and VIOLA!

Chase being cute at Mimi's house.

We had so much fun getting to spend time with Kirsti and Navy. This in not the best picture of Navy....but she is such a cute girl. And Kirsti is the cutest Mom. This is at South Coast Plaza in front of Rainforest Cafe. The kids were in HEAVEN there getting to watch all the fake animals do their thing.

Ok, this was so much fun. These are all of my really good friends from high school. We all got together at Marci's house a few days before KElly's wedding and Marci's Mom made us all homemade waffles, vanilla syrup, whip cream, and strawberries. When we were teenagers we all used to spend the night at Marci's house all the time and her Mom would make this delectable meal for us for breakfast. I missed those waffles so much. It was so fun to get together and see everyone's kids, hear about their husbands, or their soon to be husbands.

We decided we'd throw our kids into this shot.

So Hallie stopped using her pacifier about 5 months ago, but before she did I promised her that we would throw her a party when she decided to give it up. When she did finally stop using it, she refused to have her party until she was at Mimi's house with Owen (her cousin). This has left her many months to make the plans for what she wanted at her party. Her requests: A pink cake, ice cream with whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and sprinkles, and a pink drink with cherries in it that you could bite off the stem. I met all her demands and we had a really great party. We had my whole family over and made a really yummy pink cake with cream cheese frosting. The Shirley Temples were a hit, and everyone loved putting together their own icecream sundays.

One happy girl.

Here is a picture of Kelly at her wedding. She looked gorgeous and I LOVED her flowers. Can you see the feathers mixed in there? So unique.

Kelly and I at the reception.

And again. See the hot chocolate in her hand? The reception was outside, so they had a hot chocolate bar where you could add all kinds of yummies to your hot chocolate. The reception was so fun. It's been a long time since I got out on the dance floor.

Here's Hallie and Chase enjoying one of our sunny days. The ate their doughnuts and chocolate milk outside on the patio with their cousin Alex.

So all my family came into town with their kids....and of course we had to hit up Chucky Cheese. And of course, David had to take Hallie on a Monster truck ride.

Loading up our luggage in the car to go home......Hallie thinking hard about leaving.

And soaking in her last few rays of sunshine.

We were all really excited to go back home and see Matt. The kids missed him like crazy, but I missed him even more. Three weeks is a long time to be away from you hubby. And it was hard to talk to him on the phone while we were gone because of the time difference.

So we left from Riverside on a cargo plane going to Deleware on Friday morning. We arrived in Dover Friday night and were told that there were LOTS of flights going to Germany. Too bad that every flight was either canceled, or they didn't release any seats to passengers....for THREE DAYS!!! So after the first night of sleeping in the air terminal (the kids sleeping, me sobbing crying to Matt and him trying to get me into lodging SOMEWHERE) Matt was finally able to get us into base lodging at about 5am saturday morning. I kept calling about flights and kept being told the same thing. No room for passengers. Finally I found out about a commercial airline taking military personel out of Baltimore, Maryland. So Sunday evening we took a shuttle two hours to get to the airport. There were more complications at the airport about a problem with my paper work, more crying on the phone with Matt, more Matt coming to my rescue and solving the problem, until finally we were admitted onto the flight. We arrived back home in Germany at about 11 am monday morning and were SOOO happy to get home (after the three hour drive back to our house) and get some sleep. That's pretty much all we've been doing since we got here actually, is sleeping. And of course getting my fill of cuddling with my hubby.

Aside from the awful trip home, it was a great vacation and SOOO good to see my family again. Even better to see my husband again though.....