February 2, 2011- The 36 Hour Day...

    On February 1, the last time I wrote to you, I was blogging from my own computer inside my home on Kwajalein.  Now, I am sitting at my boyfriend's parents' computer in Oregon looking out the window at the llamas and dogs in the neighbor's yard along with the leafless trees and brown and green landscape of a state in the middle of winter.  On this day on the island, I woke up around 7:30 am and headed into work after getting the kids off to school an hour later.  I worked for approximately 6 hours with a short break for lunch, then headed home to finish packing for our trip. After saying our goodbyes to the boys, we headed for the terminal where we had to check in and wait about 2 hours before boarding the plane. We left Kwajalein at 7 pm February 2nd. After a 7 hour flight to Hawaii arriving at approximately 4:00 in the morning on February 2nd (again), we began living the day over. We waited for airport officials and airline employees to arrive at work and open up, which was around 5 am, then we checked in and and waited yet again for our flight to leave for San Franscisco at 7:45 am.  Another long flight later (5 hours), we touched down in the great state of California, checking out the Golden Gate bridge and looking for Alcatraz as we descended around 2 pm in the afternoon.  After grabbing a bite to eat and a local Anchor Steam brew from the San Franscisco Soup Company, we were off to our final filght of this very long, long day. We took off from California at 5 pm and proceeded to watch a gorgeous sunset all the way along the west coast up to Eugene, Oregon.  The reds and oranges across the Pacific Ocean were absolutely stunning. We timed our flights just right for the views. :-) Arriving in Oregon, we rented our car and picked up our suitcases among numerous "Oregon Ducks" sports teams getting ready to head out for games across the country.  The 45 minute drive to my boyfriend's parent's place was uneventful, and upon arriving, his parents and brother's family were all there to greet us with appetizers and spirits ready to go.  It was so good to finally be there, and we immediately joked how we had arrived just 1 hour after taking off from Kwajalein, 8 pm on Febraury 2nd.  It was a 36 hour day!