Hawaii Trip - 6/4-5/2008 - Return Home

On Wednesday it was time to pack up the house and head for home. Mom and Dad were not leaving until late that evening, and Jeff and Rachel were not leaving until Thursday, but we had to be at the airport at noon for our long trek home. We were planning to eat lunch at a nice restaurant, but we could not find it. So we settled on McDonald's for our farewell lunch.

Sierra says goodbye to Aunt Rachel

A sad Mimi hugs Sierra

Raquel shows Uncle Jeff her new purse

Bob-Bob gives Raquel a goodbye squeeze

It is always hard to say to goodbye, especially when we don't know when we will see each other again. It had been a fun week and we were glad for all the special times we've had together.

After we left Jeff and Dad went on a helicopter tour of the island. They said it was really awesome. You can check out the pictures at www.dewald.smugmug.com in the Mimi & Bob-Bob's Hawaii pics gallery if you are interested.

Raquel on the flight from Kauai to Honolulu

We got on our short flight to Honolulu and then prepared to take the LONG flight to Chicago. The plane to Chicago was really big (a 2/5/2 seat configuration). We got on the plane and it seemed that we had more legroom than on previous flights. It was then that we realized that we had been bumped up to economy plus seating. Thank God for small favors! That extra five inches makes a huge difference on an 8+ hour flight. Well what can I say about the flight expect that it was really long. We left Honolulu at about 5pm their time (which is 11pm Ohio time). After we ate our purchased snack boxes we hoped that the girls would go to sleep. Raquel did end up going to sleep for about three hours, but considering that this was an all night flight that is not quite enough. She kept saying "night-night over" and "its good morning time" at about 3am. Not exactly what I wanted to hear. Sierra managed to sleep for about five hours and we were pretty happy with that. I was sitting with Raquel for the majority of the time, but I did manage to get a little sleep. Then at about 4:30am CST we hit turbulence. Anyone who knows me well knows that I get motion sickness. Combine that with an empty stomach and very little sleep and I was not doing well. I managed to survive the remainder of the flight and was very happy when we landed in Chicago at about 6am CST.

We were all so exhausted and hungry. We got a huge breakfast at McDonald's in the airport and prepared for our short flight back to Cleveland. While waiting for the plane we were talking some of the flight attendants who had been on our flight from Honolulu and it turned out that they were from Shelby and Red Haw, Ohio (about 20 minutes from where we live). What a small world!

We got back to Cleveland and got all our bags and then waited for the shuttle to take us back to the hotel to get our van. By the time we got home it was 11:30am EST. I have never been so tired in my life. I was actually so exhausted that I couldn't even walk. We went straight to bed and slept until dinner time. It took us weeks to get back to sleeping normally, but we were glad to have had a nice trip.