Back in the US of A!

This is going to be fairly short since I'm exhausted. It's 4am in Europe, but 10pm here in Baltimore. For some reason I couldn't sleep at all on the 9 hour flight back over here. I finished a book I had just started 2 days ago though, so that was good.

We were apparently the people with the most seniority on the space a list out of Ramstein because they called our names first. I guess having already been on leave for 3+ weeks helps quite a bit. =) There were 69 seats available, but it took them 2 hours and boarding us, unboarding us and and reboarding us before we got off the ground. The flight wasn't too bad. I sat next to a master sergeant in the AF and she was a nurse who'd been deployed for 4 months and in the military for 23 years. It was pretty interesting talking to her and it increased my respect for those who volunteer to serve even more. She described some of the living conditions in the war zone and told me a little about what goes on over there. I couldn't imagine deploying...

We got back to the US and through customs without much problem and tried to get a flight out of Baltimore to Chicago tonight, but there weren't any available. So we booked a flight on Southwest for tomorrow at 10:30am and now we're at a Best Western. It is SOOO good to be able to understand everything everyone is saying around you and being able to watch TV again. I turned my cell phone on for the first time in 3 weeks today. Surprisingly though, I didn't miss it very much while it was off.

My mom is flying in to Chicago tomorrow also, so it'll be nice to see her, although she'll be there because my uncle is dying of cancer. They don't think he'll make it through the week. It'll be nice to see my family again, but it's too bad it's because of these circumstances. I just pray right now that he dies a quick, painless death, since he has cancer pretty much everywhere and is in a lot of pain.

We're VERY excited to see our weina babies tomorrow. When we get home (to Enid) we're going to need a vacation from vacationing. That seems to be the way it usually is. Good thing I don't have a job anymore.