Mom and Shawn leave!

Let us out!! Let us out!! We know there's luggage up there. We can hear you moving around. We want out of our cage!
--Poker and Euchre

We're leaving for our big vacation. I go downstairs to say Bye to the boys. I open their cages, give them a hug, then put them back then go up to help Shawn load the car. I go back in the house one more time and the crying from the basement is pathetic! I go down there and open the cages and the boys sprint upstairs and start sniffing around where the luggage was. I think they know we're leaving.

I put them in a cage, give them a treat, and they sit like it's a typical day of me going to the office. Okay, so maybe they don't know we're leaving.

I'm taking over their blog while I'm on vacation, so you can see vacation photos as they happen(-ish), and so I won't forget what we did. I'll help the guys type their Bullog when we get back.

--Cindy

The flight over was pretty long. Fortunately, I booked the flight through Phoenix rather than through a busy airport (like O'Hare) or one with a big chance of winter weather (O'Hare or Denver). Getting out of Baltimore was no problem. Nonstop 5:45 hour flight to Phoenix. The flight attendant tells us, "For the 20 or so of you continuing on to Hawaii...This is your short trip."

So 6:15 hours later. Well, 8+ hours later, we make it to Kona. On the Phoenix runway, a passenger has a medical issue and we have to go back to the terminal, get emergency personnel, get her off the plane, get her luggage off the plane, then wait for an engineer to come aboard to fix some medical equipment. Then we're off, about 1.5 hours behind.

Finally in Hawaii, we're ready to hit the ground running, get the rental car, get to the hotel, enjoy our first sunset... But in reality, our luggage is on the 3rd trip of the luggage cart (Apparently, there's just one cart. It goes back and forth between the carousel and the plane), the rental shuttle is full, then the line at the rental car counter is long. We almost got free luggage out of it though. Shawn loaded up the trunk of the car and I'm like, what's that? He says, it's your luggage. I say, No it's not. He has made off with someone's luggage. I go and return it.

By the time we're on the road to the hotel (2 hours after we land), it's really dark. Kind of tired, kind of excited, we find the shopping center get some dinner, and then go to sleep. At 3 am Baltimore-time.