Sunday, September 19, 2010

SURPRISE!!!!

I was so excited when my sister told me she was coming to visit me and stay with me. As it started getting closer and closer, I couldn't believe she was flying out already. Jonathan, me, and the 3 kiddos head to the airport on a Thursday to pick her up. She has an 11 pm arrival. We get to the airport and find her baggage claim area and we wait for a little bit. She has to get on a train to get to the claim area. People from her flight are already gathered around and the bags start to fall, but still no Emily. She has called and says, she barely missed the train and she's gonna catch the next one and be on her way. Meanwhile, I see her bag drop, and I grab it. We finally see her, and the boys run to her (like in the movies). We hug and all that jazz. So, I show her that I already have her bag and she says, "I have one more medium sized black one." I was like, "for real, you're only staying 4 days." She replies, "It's from Mom." That totally makes sense, because I can see Mom sending a suitcase of goodies for us. So, we wait. The boys are searching really hard for the suitcase and asking Emily about every black bag they see. We are all chitchatting about her flight and her layover, etc. I am beginning to ask her also, "how big is the bag? Is that it?" The boys are really on the search, and for some reason my sister has her back to the luggage pretty much the whole time. Jonathan, Emily, and I are in a sorta circle, so she's the only one not looking for her bag, and she's the only one that knows exactly what it looks like. I was kinda frustrated, but I knew we would get it eventually. Nathan even turns to Emily after asking her about 50 times, "is it that black one?" and says, " you should probably be looking too." During this, another flights luggage starts coming out of the same claim area, so we wait for quite a while thinking it might have been lost and it'll come soon. We wait for a really.long time, I would say about 20 min. Emily starts showing me pictures she took of clouds and mountains from her plane window. About halfway through her picture showing, the luggage conveyor stops. I stop looking at the pics and I'm like, " for real, where's your bag?"
Emily is like, " finish looking at the pics I took" Jonathan also encourages me to finish looking at the pictures too. There were a lot of clouds and she explained each one in detail.
Why is no one worried about her luggage and the conveyor being stopped? It was kinda frustrating. She's almost done showing me her pictures and these two men with carts start collecting all of the bags no one has claimed yet. Unfortunately, she says none of them are hers. I say, "ask them where we go to get your bag." I was ready to go ask them. They were speaking another language, so Jonathan says, "don't ask them, they're not speaking English." They were bound to know a little, I really wanted to ask them, but also was trying not to take over the situation. I see a sign about Delta luggage and we (very slowly) mosey our way over to this kinda office place. I'm realizing it's getting late and I feel like the only one who has a sense of urgency. I really wanna get home, instead of Just hanging at the airport. Emily looks through some luggage on the ground, right outside the office, not seeing her luggage she goes inside to talk to the lady behind the desk. Usually, I would be right in the middle, putting my two cents in, but not wanting to start the weekend off on a bad start I take my husband's advice and wait outside while just Emily goes in. Jonathan starts acting kinda funny and says, "let's go over here and look at something( I can't remember exactly what he wanted to look at). I just got a feeling that he wanted me away from the door of the office. I then start to think Mom must have sent this HUGE package that must have like the most awesome present ever in it.
Emily comes out and tells us the lady is working on it. I sit down on the edge of a conveyor belt. Less than a minute later, Emily waves at someone kinda behind me with a weird question mark smile on her face. Quickly racing through my mind is, Emily knows zero people here in the Seattle area. I'm thinking she's just being funny and weirdly waving at someone she either doesn't know or the craziest coincidence ever, that someone else she knows just happens to be here too. I stand up and turn around to see who she's waving at. The last person on Earth that I thought would be standing there would be my Mom, but to my surprise, there she stands. OH MY GOODNESS!! The waterworks happened so quickly and I cover my mouth in shock and from what I'm told, I repeat, " I hate you" about 4 times. Not at all what you would think you would say, but I was absolutely taken by surprise and it was said in a "I can't believe y'all surprised me like this" way. It was by far the best present ever.
After I finally got over the shock of it all, I finally realize there was no black suitcase, everything that had happened after Emily got off the plane was a total stall tactic. All of the pieces were finally clicking. Jonathan is usually a "let's get it and go" kinda guy. I couldn't believe he didn't want to get home sooner, find her bag quicker, look at the pictures in the car on our hour and a half drive home. Oh, and the lady behind the desk, my sister just went in there and said, "I don't need anything, just need to pretend that I have a lost bag." The lady types on computer like she's looking something up.
My Mom's flight had been delayed about 30ish minutes (that's right, they came from the same city in Texas on different flights at different times and by some craziness arrived only 30 min after each other on the same day).
Weird.
We finally got my Mom's luggage and headed to the house. They were very sneaky and it was really fun how it all went down. I was blown away and on the way home I kept realizing why certain things were done or said.
All I can say is, "they got me good."

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Saturday, September 18, 2010

School Boys!!!

Nathan and Clayton just started school. Well, it is such a huge milestone, a first grader and a kindergartner. Nathan started 3 days before Clayton. He seemed ready but kinda nervous too. He woke up and streched, and said to me "I haven't done that in a long time." I have kinda made the kids not get up til around 10 or 11am, so when 7 am comes along, well, it makes you stretch and yawn! He is slowly making new friends, and really likes his teacher and the school so far.
Clayton was super duper ready for school. I think watching Nathan go last year made him more excited and ready. Clayton and I went for a little "getting to know and what to expect" orientation in his class, given by his teacher. We got to speak and say "Hello" to his teacher afterwards. When we left I asked him, "Do you like your teacher?" Out of the mouths of kids, he says, "she looked good." Not exactly the answer I was going for, but really kinda funny.
When I walked Clayton into his classroom on his first day, we walked in and started looking for his name at a table. We found it, and he sat down looking at the coloring papers in front of him, so eager and ready. I talked to him one more time about me picking him up after school and he said, "I know." I asked him if he wanted me to stay for a little bit, and he says, "no, I'm good, you can go." Wow, no separation anxiety or anything. No crying, no fussing, no whining??? With that said, he gave me and Caleb a hug and a kiss and off we went, just me and Caleb. It was really sweet seeing him sitting there at his table, just waiting. It was kinda tough, but I survived.
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