Our Spirits Are Up

5:30 AM Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.  That is where one would find Claire and me when this post is composed.  We've been up since 2:00 AM, which is what makes the title of this post relevant.  Instead of bringing you guys up to date, I'm going to work backwards.  Otherwise, my head will hurt.

First of all, look at this girl:

One Happy Camper

I said we were up at 2:00 AM; this is Claire at closer to 9:00 PM last night at the Holiday Inn after we arrived at nearly 7:00 PM.  Our options were few: sleep in a curled up ball in the airport or stay at a near by hotel even if it is for 6 hours.  It felt great to be able to sleep in a bed, get a shower and put clean clothes on.  We filled our bellies with room service pizza and to wash it all down:

Gatorade and Wine

Prior to all of this, we spent the better part of 7 hours chasing the sun across the horizon.  The experience was typical: babies crying, surly flight attendants, and non existent leg room.  Unfortunately due to clouds and our in ability to catch the sun, the scenery wasn't that great.  Here's the best I could do:

I was messing with my camera settings here.  For you camera people it was iso of 400 and the red filter on.

This is the iPhone 4's camera at work.

Prior to that we enjoyed our "last meal" of sorts in the Tootsies restaurant outside of security with Claire's mom, Linda, and Claire's aunt, Leigh.  These two were life savers driving us up from Paducah and treating us, as well as the cousins and Natalie to another "last meal" in Nashville.  Look up Sperry's next time you are in Nashville.  You will not be disappointed.  Though its not the best picture of them, they deserve a spotlight in history, so without further adieu, here are our two shepherds who successfully saw us off on our journey:

Yoga and spinning partner Leigh on the left and Mother-in-Law extraordinaire Linda on the right.

As for who your authors are:

Look at all those bags!

Bag montage: 

Them all perched on the bag cart.  They fell off probably 6 times while moving around.

Everything loaded in the back of the Jeep.  Our 4 checked bags' combined weight was 196.5 lbs.  

Here they are all stacked up in the hall way.

Space saver bags are amazing.  Thats like two full closets right there!

Now that you are up to speed, my job is complete.  In 30 minutes we will board our flight.  It looks like its chartered from North American Airlines from the writing on the side.  On the outside it looks quite large; fingers are crossed for decent legroom.  Our next post will be from the other side of the pond!