Back to Reality (via First Class)

Tonya's tears had nearly dried by the time we were ready to land at Love Field. Just as the wheels were touching down our SWA pilot came on the PA system, welcomed us to Dallas and a prayer, "God Bless The Dallas Cowboys & Tony Romo"; made us smile, only on Southwest and in Texas would you be likely to hear that prayer request. Texas is it's own little country, and Tonya is proud to be a Texan. From that point on it seemed as if everything ran just like clockwork. On our way to baggage claim we smiled as we passed "our bench", the one that we had lived on for several hours the week before. We noticed is was now occupied by a new family that looked pretty tired too. Once we gathered our bags with hailed a cab and make our way to our hotel (yes, decided against spending about night in the airport and slept in the hotel we had reserved).

Everything about the room was very nice and the fact that we had received “winter rates” made it that much better. We have stayed in much worse places for a lot more money, no complaints from us. For our fancy- smancy dinner out on the town in DFW we walked across the parking lot to Denney’s! We were tired, and just wanted to grab a bite and go back to the room for a hot shower, high speed access and a comfy bed (knowing we had to catch our shuttle to the airport at 5:00 AM!) Neither of us slept all that well (seems we never do the 1st night in a hotel) even though the shower was great and the bed was great so there was no problem making the shuttle in time.

Our flight was fine, it was rather turbulent, although that was not unexpected after watching the weather. However the accommodations and customer service were superb in First Class. Leather seats big enough to accommodate our big bottoms, lots of leg room to accommodate Bill’s long legs, a hot breakfast of scrambled eggs, French toast, bacon & fresh fruit that we didn’t have to pay $5 for and non-stop coffee served in a real china cup. All of the above made the 4 hour flight to Seattle seem a lot more tolerable. During the time we were flying over Colorado it clouds cleared and the view out of the aircraft window was awesome. The mountains were so white with their white snow covering and the sky so blue in the distance. This was a vision that we are not often blessed to see from this perspective.

We arrived home to 40 degrees and rain, rain, rain. Since being home today we have unpacked, unloaded groceries and talked to G’Ma E and C2. Tonight we showered in our own shower that we love and sleep in our own bed while listening to the rain through our open bedroom window. Since we had to come home, we’re glad that the travel is behind us now.

LESSONS LEARNED:

• Even a sleepless night @ La Quinta is better anytime than a bench at Love Field
• You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can't take Texas out of the girl
• First Class air travel is the preferred method to make a 4 hour flight and very nice, a great way to use those frequent flier miles of Bill’s
• Family – we don’t get to spend enough time with any of them, and we miss them dearly
• There are actually parts of the country, like the Texas Panhandle, where people actually still say "Merry Christmas" instead of Happy Holidays, as in the Pacific Northwest.... this was music to our ears.