Home For The Holidays

So for those of you that don't know or haven't heard yet, we are back in the states for Christmas this year. We decided back in November that we were getting a little stir crazy in India and a vacation around the country sounded more stressful and frustrating than relaxing. Plus with Elizabeth's Grandma's 80th birthday party and the entire Johnson clan coming to Boise, it seemed the perfect time to surprise everyone with a trip home for Christmas.

We told some of Kevin's family and friends that we were coming but did not tell Elizabeth's parents or any other family members traveling to Boise. We did tell our cousin Andrea so we could have a spy in the homeland to help us with the surprise. Since the whole family is coming they decided it will be the perfect time to take a whole family photo since has been many years since everyone has been together at the same time. Elizabeth's mom, in the absence of our presence, decided to order life-sized cardboard cutouts of us to put in the family photo. With our spy in Boise and some side talk with the photo company, we were able to convince her that she was getting the photo cutouts and were able to show up and surprise them.

We left our apartment in Mumbai at 8:00 am on Saturday morning to catch a flight through Shanghai into San Francisco. The international portion went very smoothly and we arrived in San Francisco 22 hours later ready to tackle the last domestic trip to Seattle. Unfortunately we flew in during the snowpocalypse of the Northwest where most of Washington and Oregon were experiencing the next ice age and EVERYTHING was shut down. Our original plans were to fly from San Francisco to Seattle, spend the night at Kevin's parents' house, then fly to Boise the next day. Unfortunately that definitely did NOT happen.

4:40 pm - We show up in San Francisco, we quickly find that our Alaska Airlines flight to Seattle was cancelled so we had to scramble to find another way to get to either Seattle or Boise. The Alaska representative tells us of a United Air flight straight from SF to Boise leaving at 5:30.

5:10 pm - We walk/jog through 2 terminals (about a half-mile) to the United desk way too late to get the 5:30 but find another flight to Boise at 6:40 and book that instead. Kevin realizes he left his water bottle by the courtesy phone at the Alaska desk and runs back to get it. (Running a mile after traveling for 24 hours = bad idea). We go through security exhausted and sweaty and get to the boarding gate to find that our plane was stuck in transit from Denver to Boise and would be at least 2 hours late.

6:25 pm - Our flight is expected to arrive in SF at 8:40 and leave at 9:11.

8:35 pm - Our flight is cancelled. We wander around aimlessly at the boarding gate trying to figure out whether we should rent a car, find another route, or stay in a hotel. We re-collect our baggage and go back out to the ticketing counters. We spend the next hour waiting and thinking of options and if/how to get another ticket or get our money back for the three tickets that we had not used.

9:20 pm - We decided to call an old friend from PLU who was living in SF to come pick us up and stay at her place for the night. We should mention here that Andrea Hanson is the most wonderful person in the universe and we are eternally indebted to her.

10:40 pm - We get picked up and finally get out of the mayhem of the airport. We drive back to Andrea's apartment and try to collect our thoughts and focus on a plan. We look up flights and find a United flight from SF to Reno and a Southwest flight from SF to Boise. We book these trips (after accidentally booking 2 other flights online in our hectic and exhausted state of mind) and finally go to sleep at 1:30. Total travel time - 31 hours.

6:00 am - We wake up and get ready to head back to the madness at the airport. We leave at 7 to take the BART but find that it is not running until 8:30 so Saint Andrea drives us into the airport to get our 10:50 flight to Reno. The check-in lines are long and full of many other tired and frustrated travellers trying to get anywhere close to Portland or Seattle. We make it through the long lines and successfully get on a 10:50 flight to Reno (on time even!!).

11:40 am - We arrive in Reno to an extremely small airport and more lines of frustrated travelers watching their flights to Oregon and Washington cancelled. We check in for our 6:30pm flight and spend the next 6 hours napping, checking email, and getting refunds for all our unused and mis-purchased tickets. We luckily got refunds for all parts of all the trips that we didn't use which was a huge relief since we had just spent nearly $1500 on new tickets the previous day.

6:30 pm - We board an on-time flight from Reno to Boise and finally make the final leg of our journey, arriving in Boise at 8:40 pm. Our cousins John and Andrea pick us up from the airport and we drive to Elizabeth's parents' house to surprise them and settle in. Phew. Total travel time - 52 hours

We are now relaxed and enjoying the snowy-but-not-so-horribly-snowy-as-Seattle weather and surprising all the family members as they arrive. We are having a big family dinner tonight with everyone and enjoying cookies, snow, and family. We are having a big birthday celebration on the 27th for Elizabeth's grandma and are flying back to Seattle on the 2nd to spend a week with family and friends in Washington before heading back to Mumbai. We are so happy to be home with everyone and even though our trip was stressful we still ended up arriving only 2 hours later than originally planned and only about $200 out of our pocket for new tickets. All things considered, we were pretty lucky.

We hope everyone has a wonderful vacation and we hope to see as many people as we can while we are home. Merry Christmas!!!

क्या कहाना
K&E

Mailing Address

I hear there are people looking for our mailing address to send us Christmas cards so here you have it. It will take a bit longer then normal to get to us as you send it to Minnesota, and then they FedEx it to the school, but it works! Just a note, this is only for letters and they can be no more than 1 pound.

4707 Hwy. 61
Suite 261
White Bear Lake, MN 55110

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

क्या कहाना
K&E