Back home!

I arrived safely home today around 11 am. Let me tell you, it was quite an adventure! I'll start with my return trip and then get into the trip itself at another time b/c I'm exhausted!

We were originally scheduled to fly out Saturday at 10:50 am. Early in the week our flight was cancelled. Thursday we got rebooked for Friday at 10:50 am with the same itinerary. We would be back in Springfield Friday at 10:50 pm (the flight was 24 hours but the time difference made us get there the same date we left!).

We flew from Phnom Penh to Taipei with no problems. We then go from Taipei to LAX which was a 12 hour flight. We had to get baggage, through customs, etc and to our connecting flight to Dallas in a very short amount of time. We get to our gate and our flight to Dallas was cancelled due to mechanical problems wiht the plane. The next plane doesnt leave for a few hours which means we miss our connecting flight in Dallas to Springfield. At that point it had been about 24 hours since we had slept. I was very sick with stomach stuff (normal traveling fun stuff!) and miserable but overall we were all doing good. The other girls camped out on the floor and I camped out in the bathroom and walking up and down the halls to stay awake. We finally left LAX around 6:30 pm CA time and arrived in Dallas at 11:30 CST. We got to ride in a Boeing 777 for the flight and it was really nice. It was a shame we couldnt have that plane when we did the long flight to Taipei. For the first time we were all 5 in the same aisle and on the emergency row so we had tons of room. I actually slept for a little bit. It was comfortable.
WE had obviously missed our connecting flight at Dallas to Springfield b/c we should have already been in Springfield. So we had to get a hotel, which took forever. We arrived at the hotel around 12:45 am. IT was a NICE hotel. I had my own room with a king size bed. It was WONDERFUL!!!! We weren't able to get our luggage which meant we couldnt put clean clothes on, but at least we were able to shower and put on our dirty stinky clothes again! This morning the Greves, Dr Hardy and myself flew out at 9:30 and got home around 11. The other girls flew out at 3:15 and got in around 4:30. We couldn't all get on the same flight. IT was a VERY long exhausting time. Right now I'm going about 5 hours of sleep in three days but holding up surprisingly well. I'm trying to stay awake until 8 pm to try toi get back on a normal schedule!
That was the worst thing that happened on our entire trip, so really, it wasn't that bad. The rest of the trip was amazing!

I wasn't able to blog while I was there so I will just do highlights from my journal over the next few days to tell you more about it! I will soon upload pictures to either snapfish or shutteryfly and videos to you tube for everyone to see.

It is SO good to be home but I really miss Cambodia and hte amazing people I met there. My cats are happy to have me home and have been purring an awful lot! I am unpacked and working on laundry now. IT wasnt too bad.

I appreciate everyoen who has been praying for us! It was an amazing trip!