Back from Japan

The Early's - behind is a view of Tokyo from Sky Gardens.
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After 2 delayed flights, then 2 cancelled flights, an evening spent at the Hilton Dulles Airport Hotel with food vouchers valued at $75.00(courtesy of United Airlines), another night spent at our friend Aleks' house in Falls Church, VA and 5 hours wait at Dulles for a flight home to Columbia -- WE MADE IT HOME.

We left Japan on Friday, Aug. 24th at 4 pm and arrived at IAD (aka Dulles International Airport) on Friday - the same day at 3:30 pm. Our 12 hour trip went by fast and Evan slept most of the way. I'll tell ya to you this way -- he didn't "eat" the plane food that was served. He was always asleep when the attendant came around. This was a good thing for us, b/c NOW -- he's over his jet lag and back on his normal sleeping schedule. I must say that Evan is an awesome traveler. He didn't fuss at all (well, only the normal fussing), but we had several people tell us how surprised that we even had a 2 yr. old traveling with us. One lady on the bus told me that she would have to prepare herself every time she saw a child get on the bus. She said that most, if not all children would cry during that three hour bus ride and it was very unpleasant for her. So, she said Evan was such a good boy. It was very uplifting to hear.

According to plan, we were to board our final destination flight at 5:01 pm. We spent at least 8 hours on Friday waiting, walking, double checking our flights for any time changes, standing in the long customer service lines to make flight changes, watching the many, many people walk up and down to each gate to catch their "ON TIME" flights. Oh and - watching Veggie Tales - "The Rumor Weed." OH well for that plan! Since our flight got cancelled (twice), we decided to just stay in VA for the weekend to visit our friends. We rented a car (PT Cruiser - which by the way, was very weird to drive considering that we hadn't driven in two weeks, plus we just came from a country that drove on the left side of the road) and had dinner with our friends Tino, Lisa and their daughter Olivia. We ate at the Silver Diner. Afterwards, Evan had lots of energy to burn, so we went to Tyson's Corner Mall (suggested by our friends). BOY - was that cool! They had a neat play area for kids and Evan had a blast.

I will have pictures posted soon on our website. We forgot our digital camera at Aleks' house and will have to wait for Aleks to mail our camera to us.

Thanks to those who prayed for our trip to Japan.