Bite me, part II (aka The long road home)

(Mak and Jack in the lagoon.)
How do you get four adults and four children out of the Bahamas smoothly? You don't. The morning started off with my friend's eye still swollen from our "sandy" mishap/adventure the day before. Then Conner, her son, ended up with a half-inch splinter embedded in the heel of his foot. On the way back from bidding the DEA lagoon adieu, I slipped and fell on my hands and knees while carrying Makena on my shoulders. I managed to keep her from crashing head first into the ground but my back seized and I had no feeling between the base of my neck and my shoulder blades for about an hour. We loaded up the car and were starting to head out when Conner's dad realized he didn't have his passport. We tore all the bags apart without finding it. It turns out it was in my purse! How it got there was a mystery.

We piled back into the car and headed to Georgetown to catch our flight. We stopped at the supermarket to purchase snacks for the kids and I don't know how it happened but EM ended up closing the door on Conner's fingers. It was horrible. His fingers were stuck -- but miraculously not broken because of the rubber trim around the door -- We ended up buying frozen peas and extra-strength Tylenol and praying that his fingers were not going to swell up and that he could last until the flight made it to Miami. We flew into Miami and Conner's fingers were feeling much better and then we hightailed it to make our connection for the flight home to Los Angeles.

Makena had an enormous tantrum in the middle of the terminal. EM was horrified, I told him to walk away and pretend he didn't know us and I let Makena continue to scream and thrash about the floor while the holiday travelers passed by us trying not to step or trip over her. I figured that she might as well get it out of her system before we got on the flight -- and she did. A few minutes after boarding she fell asleep.

Unfortunately, we did not take off after boarding. We stayed parked on the runway for a while, waiting for the passenger manifest to be examined. Then about an hour into this wait, the pilot spoke to us and explained that the flight was so full and that the plane weighed so much that we were being redirected to the longest runway for take-off and that we would be traveling at a very high speed for a longer than normal time before becoming airborne. I wish he hadn't felt the need to explain this because it really stressed me out. But we did take off (eventually) and we did finally land late but safe.

We thought we were home free but our luggage never made it and we spent an hour and a half trying to figure out where it was and what other flight it might be on... I could go on and on but we are already in 2008 and much more has happened since. I'm still trying to catch up and we are all still itching from the bug bites!

Is - happy to be home