We made it home

We are back in Boulder, all in one piece, and slowly recovering and adjusting to the time change.

We had quite a trip home though - and not one that I think any of us would like to repeat. We had a two part trip home - from Heathrow to Chicago and then from Chicago to Denver. The Heathrow to Chicago portion of the trip was fairly uneventful. Getting from Alexis and Chris' flat to Heathrow was quite an experience. Our flight was at 12:20 pm and we left the flat at 8:30 am. We took the Underground with 3 roller bags and 2 carry-ons, and a baby in tow. Joseph is tough and really carried all of the stuff while I carried Jac. Getting on the Tube at ruh hour with all of that stuff was exciting!

We made it to Heathrow and through security (after they confiscated our freezer gel packs) and onto our flight. Yeah! It is a long flight from Heathrow to Chicago. Jac slept for the first two hours of it (we had to wake him up at the flat) and then was awake for the rest of it. Joseph and I were exhausted by the time we made it to Chicago.

O'Hare is huge! It was hard for us to believe how far we had to walk after we got off the plane just to make it to Immigration and Customs. After waiting in a long line at Passport Control we went to get our bags. We had to wait quite a while for them and then take them through Customs. We then immediately gave them back to United and then took a train to Terminal 1 where our next flight would be leaving from.

Our original schedule had us arriving in Chicago at 3:30 pm (our flight from Heathrow was about 45 minutes late) and leaving Chicago at 6:30 pm. When we finally go through to see the monitors our flight to Denver was on time. We ate some food quickly and then headed to the gate. And the delays began. Our flight ended up being delayed by 5 hours by the time we were wheels up. As we were sitting there and our flight kept on getting delayed we started getting worried about how much formula we had for a Jac. We had not packed enough for such a long delay and we were worried he wouldn't have enough food. We lobbied United to let us get our bags off the plane (the plane sat there the entire time - we were waiting for a crew) but they wouldn't let us.



I ended up taking a $30 cab ride to a grocery store that had Alimentum (I had to help the cab driver get there using Google Maps on my iPhone!). Of course, because we did all of that, Jac slept for the entire flight, and we did not need the can of formula I bought!

We also ended up renting a car when we got to Denver - because it was 2 am and we did not want our dog to have to pick us up at that time (she was going to bring us home when we were arriving at 10 pm!). Returning the car the next day turned out to be a problem also!

All in all - we are glad to be home - but we really liked London - and Jac misses the big city already! It is nice to be back on our own space where we know where everything is and we have all of the conveniences that we get so used to!