I woke up at 7 am instinctively on Saturday after what I'm guessing was a good 4 or 5 hours of sleep. I woke up the family and we woke up and got ready. FINALLY I GOT OUR MINUTES ACTIVATED. Virgin Mobile is the shit... tiest phone company we've ever used. I had a horrible time activating our cheap ass phone and then I had to wait till the next morning to activate the minutes. Anyways, I got it working. Dave let dad borrow his truck to drive us to the airport so we loaded it up and went. It was hard leaving the boys (what we call our dogs, they're like my mom's sons or something), but they didn't seem to understand what was going on. They miss us though, Dad told us.

On the drive to the airport I was kinda scared. But we all talked the whole time which helped. We got there and parked and got our luggage together. Finally we walk inside, and our first mission is to get three of our suitcases checked and print out our boarding passes. The line was long but it moved quickly. Dad had called the Philidelphia airport and asked for a wheelchair for my mom since she has nerve damage in her legs so DIA got her a wheelchair too. After we got the wheelchair we went to security where we got to go to the front of the line cause of the wheelchair. I had to take off my shoes and my sweatshirt and put all my stuff in bins, then walk through a doorway thing. I got all my stuff back and we went to get on a train that was similar to a subway. It took us to our terminal and it was so much fun! It remided me of the Harry Potter books where they take underground tunnels in carts at the Gringotts Bank. There were bunches of fans on the walls down there that spun when we went really fast. Going on the train kinda made me relax a bit about going on a plane.

Then we went to a French bistro for brunch. I got wikki sticks, yay!! Also I ordered penne with butter and parmesean which I ate half of and took the other half of it on the plane. I had sprite too but they put too much seltzer in it so I just drank water. We went to check in for our flight, and we got to ride on these conveyor belts that make you go faster. They made me kinda dizzy and they're hard to get on and off of. Then we got to the place where you wait to board your flight and asked the lady at the desk if Mom, Aliya and I could sit together. She was so hard-hearted! She said maybe she could get Aliya and Mom to sit together. Ugh I was so distressed cause the only thing that made me feel better about going on the plane was the thought that I could sit with my family. Finally we got on the plane and this really nice lady switched seats with us so we could all sit together. Here's a picture of the plane I took while waiting to board:

The plane started to take off and I was kinda nervous. But I had the window seat so I got to look outside and it was amazing! I really enjoyed looking at the landscape getting smaller and smaller. On the plane they served drinks so I got cran apple juice and I ate my leftover pasta and I also got a warm cookie towards the end of the flight. They had tv's in the plane and towards the end of the flight I watched the episode of The Office where they go to a job fair and part of an episode of Monk. During most of the flight though I looked out the window and listened to my iPod. Here are some of the pictures I took during the flight:



^^ Can anyone tell me if that's the Mississippi? I really think it is... ^^



The flight lasted longer than expected, so when it finally landed I was relieved! Landing in Philadelphia was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I'm sorry I couldn't take pictures during it because it was truly remarkable. It was like swimming in a sea of clouds at first, and there were little floating cloud islands and clouds above other clouds and spaces in between the clouds and all sorts of amazing things. And then when we got a peek at the ground below we saw trees turning autumn colors and hill and valleys and little houses and towns. I saw a baseball field and track and football field and they looked so tiny! We started to fly over the city and I saw lots of buildings and roads and cars. We started to fly over a river. Does anyone know the name of the river in or near Philadelphia? As we were flying over it we started getting lower and lower... and lower and I was just thinking PLEASE LET THERE BE A RUNWAY REAL NEARBY and just when I thought we were all gonna drown a big pavement runway showed up. Boy, it was exciting.

It took forever to get off the plane and it was really hot on the plane while waiting. Eventually we did get off and my mom's wheelchair escort was waiting for us.

The woman at Philly International Airport who was assigned to be my mom's wheelchair pusher was like, Sonic the Hedgehog. Aliya and I were panting and huffing and puffing and running after her to keep up. I didn't like PIA because it wasn't as nice as DIA and it seemed kinda run-down. I was nervous. On the airplane we got to sit with each other again, but unfortunately the world's most obnoxious woman ever was seated behind me. She kept saying things like "It's kinda hot in here isn't it people?!" and stuff. Nobody answered her cause she seemed either drunk or just really obnoxious and neither is a good option. They were putting new tires on the plane but they weren't the right tires so they had to get different tires. It took an hour which upset Obnoxious Lady. "You'd think they could do this before the passengers boarded huh people?!" THE PLANE JUST LANDED, IDIOT MCIDIOTPANTS. She got on my nerves throughout the flight. By the time we were ready to take off, it was dark outside which scared me. Also it has just rained. There was lots of turbulance and I didn't like this flight much at all, though I did get cran apple juice again. We landed just as I was starting to feel nauseous. I can understand why they needed to put new tires on the plane earlier, this pilot landed the plane like a maniac! We were going SO fast and I was terrified and then he had to like, brake really hard. But finally we got off the plane.

At the Florida Airport we found out that they lost our checked luggage! Ugh. Then we had to find Aunt Karin, which we did eventually. Then we had to find her car, which was really hard but we did it and headed to her house.

The next day they delivered our luggage really late. But we finally got clean clothes. Finally, our journey is complete!