Hop To It

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At least, that's what I should be doing, rather than blogging.  It's the price for crossing the Pacific. 

After holding a tan ID card all but one year of my life, I have finally caught a military hop.  As I write this, I'm sitting in my grandma's condo in Seattle rather than on my side of the world.

A few months ago, Ronnie was picked up to run the Air Force Marathon in Dayton, Ohio.  I couldn't let him run without having the best cheering group in the world (see post about Go Daddy Go).  Lucky for us, the Air Force has started bringing the rotator back into Korea. 

So we got up early Tuesday morning and headed for the Osan Terminal.  It was crowded with a lot of Space A hopefuls.  Finally it was time for roll call; we were called the first time around, but they only had one seat.  We decided to wait until the second call, crossing our fingers that they would have 3 more seats open up.  In the meantime, the girls made fast friends with another family who was space-a'ing as well.  They made it on the first call, and I was crossing my fingers again because the kids were playing well together.   Would be nice to have some friends to play with on the flight.  Second call came around and we were in!    

Our tickets had us each in the middle seat of a row; lucky for us the people around us were really nice and decided to switch.  Guess they didn't want to entertain our kids for us.   The flight stopped in Misawa, Japan to pick up some more passengers and we had to deplane.  At first I was thinking we would have to stay in the gate area, but they opened up a side door for the smokers.   We played outside for most of our layover, and even enjoyed watching air show practice by the F-16 squadron.  About three hours later, we boarded and were on our way to Seattle.

The girls did incredibly well on the flight.  We had enough to entertain them, the crew fed us really well, and they went to sleep without a fight.  This is where waking up early paid off; they got a good 6 hours of sleep before we landed.  We made it to Seattle a little after 7 am local (about 11 pm in our brains). 

Holly was too funny.  She was concerned that our Korean friends wouldn't know where to go because the signs were in English.    My sweet considerate girl!

Anyway, we made it through immigration quickly, got our bags and cleared customs, signed up for our return flight, and headed to get our rental car.  All in a matter of an hour.  Before we knew it, we were sitting in IHOP enjoying some breakfast and coffee.  After breakfast, we hit the road to travel about an hour north to my grandma's house.

We wound up stopping a little over halfway there because the girls were starting to get the faroff gaze. We headed for the local mall to activate our cell phone.   Our stop wound up being right by my uncle's house, who swooped us up to relax at his house for a bit.  The girls were having a great time playing with Cousin Emily and the puppies, while Ronnie and I visited with my uncle.  After an hour or so, we decided to get back on the road to grandma's house, but not before making lunch plans for the next day.     

We went to bed around 4 pm local last night; but here I am wide wake at midnight.  But I'm looking forward to our visit with family and friends before we hop back in less than a week.