st. thomas

we were lucky enough to spend a week on st. thomas with angie, klane, and annie (thanks to angie's very gracious parents who let her use a week of their timeshare). it was the most beautiful vacation. my snorkeling skills improved significantly (if you ever see mike he loves telling the story of me attempting to snorkel in cancun. complete with actions.) mike and klane bought a really nasty local drink. angie took a lot of lovely pictures. and annie got really tan :) angie did an amazing job of documenting the trip on their blog thosehardings.com so if you are curious about the day to day activities and want to see a photo of the best coconut ice cream in the known world along with a poker game played by the light of a glow stick, check it out. {all photos were also pillaged from her because she is talented}

favorite part of the trip: swimming by ourselves at mermaids chair with pelicans dive-bombing all around us

least favorite part of the trip: spending the night on the floor of the dallas airport. we were delayed an hour and a half circling dallas and then landing briefly in oklahoma city due to rain. by the time we arrived in dallas we had missed our connecting flight and the terminal was closed. and by closed i mean deserted. at 7:30 at night. we finally found an employee to talk to, even though she looked like she was 14. she politely informed us that we had been rebooked for the following morning at 8 and delta would not provide hotel vouchers because it was due to weather. of course. so we called the very reputable hotel 8 down the road to come pick us up. the girl on the phone said we had just missed the courtesy van and to go wait outside for it to swing by again. so we waited for their phantom van. for an hour.

{tangent: there were a bunch of other people waiting for hotel vans too. an older lady who waited with us for awhile asked us where we were headed. we told her hotel 8. and then she scooted slowly away from us. the hyatt picked her up. go figure.}

we tried calling hotel 8 several times and were transferred, transferred, transferred, and... put on hold for twenty minutes. i think the hotel 8 girl lied to us. i doubt they shelled out the cash for a courtesy van. because they are cheap, like us. so at 11 we decided to just spend the night in the terminal. we hauled everything back into the empty terminal since the main part of the airport was locked up. we briefly considered sleeping on the baggage claim but abandoned it for the much more appealing concrete floor. it was freezing. mike grabbed t-shirts from his bag and draped them over us. and we settled in under the florescent lights and elevator music, which was interrupted every thirty minutes by blasting announcements: IF YOU ARE TRAVELING WITH AN INFANT CHECK YOUR TICKET FOR THE PHRASE INFANT IN ARMS... IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON TAKING AEROSOL OR LIQUID IN YOUR CARRYON IT MUST BE SEALED IN A ONE GALLON ZIPLOC BAG... ARE YOU A MEMBER OF THE DELTA SKYMILE CLUB? oh man. each time we would sort of drift off the announcements would start and jerk us awake. it sounded like a bullhorn right in your face. and then the cleaning crews descended upon us. whenever one of them walked by i glared at them with my bloodshot eyes from under our t-shirt blanket. and they laughed at us. i probably would have too.

best night ever.

but, we did arrive 4 hours early at the terminal for our flight.