Time for the long journey home. We awoke very early in order to catch a taxi to the airport. Our first flight was from Helsinki to Stockholm. Here are a couple of shots from the air.
We had kind of a long wait in Stockholm but everyone kept busy.
The next leg was Stockholm to Chicago, which was fine. We were pleased to be sharing the plane with a couple of Special Olympics teams who were flying to Los Angeles for competition. (It was a fun coincidence, especially given that several of our L.A. friends attended some of the games as spectators.)
On the final flight, from Chicago to San Francisco, I sat scrunched between two passengers, one row in front of all three boys. It was fine, but not the most comfortable I’ve ever been. Bruce sat across the aisle from a mom traveling with a baby and a toddler. The baby, who had just turned one, was not at all happy to be stuck on that flight and was a bit fussy. Luckily, Bruce (the baby whisperer) jumped in to help. He held the little guy for a while and kept him busy ripping up a magazine, a game our boys loved when they were that age. Tearing and scrunching paper never gets old.
By the time we landed in San Francisco, we’d been going for 24 hours and we were so tired! We collected our luggage and called an Uber to pick us up. (That worked extremely well!) Within five minutes both boys were asleep.
Bruce and I were not far behind in that respect. It was probably the quietest ride our driver had ever had.
We slept well finally back in our own beds. In the morning, we set out a spread that was as close to the ones we had at Jokke and Merja’s as we could manage. We love that German honey!
