Sweet Home Alabama 12/13/09

We made it!!

We arrived home last night around midnight, a whole day earlier than we thought we were supposed to. This was definitely a surprise to us, as we had planned on not getting home until today. Apparently the plan had changed, and we didn't learn about it until Friday when we started calling to get our departure time for today.

We definitely had mixed feelings about leaving early. We were soooo looking forwared to another day in paradise to relax and do whatever we pleased. We had nothing planned for the day, and that's actually what we were looking forward to most. We had tossed around a few options of what we could do, and we were siked about them. So when we found out we were coming home early, we honestly had to get past the disappointment of not having that last 24 hours in Hawaii to thinking about seeing Mr. Jake and having a day at home to sort of recover before going back to work tomorrow. And of course now that we're here, we're happy it worked out this way (other than walking off the airplane to 40 degrees and rainy weather...yuck!). We literally looked at each other and said, "I wonder if we can just turn around and go back!"

So we met my mom this morning to pick up Jake, and boy was he glad to see us and vice versa. We all missed each other terribly, and we're so blessed and thrilled to be back together as a family again.

I'm so thankful that Jim and I had this opportunity to see such a beautiful place and spend the amount of quality time together that we had. It was truly rejuvenating and refreshing. And Jake had an equally great time with his grandparents and extended family. They have all been telling me stories about things they did and how entertained they were by having Jake around. In fact, my mom has called me three times today...she's so lost without him.

Today, we have worked on unpacking and doing load after load of laundry. We did wash one load while we were there, but I'm not so sure that it helped at all. I think we've almost sorted through it all, so we've accomplished quite a bit. I'm looking forward to this week even though I know it will be busy.

Among getting our house organized once again, I've also been working on editing photos from recent sessions before I start to work on the 1400 I brought back on two memory cards from Hawaii. I'm excited to get started on them this week and start sharing lots of lots of them with you and telling you all about our excursions in Hawaii. So stay tuned for those posts this week and maybe into next depending on how quickly I can get through them all.

Before I close tonight, I do want to share one quick story about our trip because it ties in with the title of this post. When Jim and I landed in HI, I headed straight for baggage claim while Jim went straight to the rental car agency desk located at the airport. When we got our bags and the keys to the car, we quickly got going while we still had a little bit of daylight in hopes that we wouldn't be searching for our hotel in downtown Waikiki in the dark. So as we were riding along, I decided to turn on the radio to see if I could find a little Hawaiian music to put us in the spirit of being in Hawaii. The first button I pushed on the set of programmed stations was just getting finished with their commercial break, so I decided to leave it to see what type of music they played. All of a sudden, the song started playing. Come on now...I know you can hear it in your head. Yep! It was Sweet Home Alabama by Lynrd Skynrd. Jim and I both turned in slow motion and looked at each other and just shook our heads and died out laughing! Of all the songs that could be playing in Hawaii, and it had to be Sweet Home Alabama. Needless to say, we felt right at home...home sweet home Alabama.