Official

I'm going home later this year!! Whooooo!!! Now, let's just hope I don't get shot :) The statistics I've been hearing regarding Salinas aren't exactly comforting!

I've been watching ticket prices bounce around all over the place for the last few weeks and they seemed to have leveled out around $950. At one point, they shot up to $1,300 (barf)! When we finally got our tax returns, I hit the ground runnin' to find a decent ticket....why oh why do I always have to connect through Heathrow? I mean, most people would probably think "Oh hey! How cool is that? You get to have a layover in England". Well, it's not all that cool. In fact, I hate Heathrow as much as I hate Atlanta International Airport. It's VERY spread out, you have to go through several security check points, lots of walking, add some more walking if not sprinting, and you have to wait till the last minute to figure out which gate you need to go to for your flight. The arrivals / departure boards update every 10-15 minutes and your flight won't show till about 30 minutes before your flight. Once yours is shown, you literally need to haul ass if your boarding gate happens to be on the opposite side of the airport. Not fun. Luckily, I found a ticket that has about a two hour layover there, which gives me a decent amount of time to go through customs, immigration, security, and then get all situated for the lovely 10ish hour flight to Los Angeles.Tell ya what, some of the tickets blew my mind in terms of layover times! Some of 'em had 10 HOURS of layovers between flights...so I could've been sitting at Heathrow for 10 hours till I got to Los Angeles, then another 8 hours to get to Monterey! WOWSAS! I couldn't imagine sitting around that long..it's bad enough that the whole travel time from Brussels to Monterey is going to be 17.5 hours...so extending that to 27 or 30 hours...no thanks! lol

I'm just looking forward to seeing everyone, especially my Grandma. Every time I talk to her, I get VERY guilt tripped about living over here. I mean, it's BAAAAD. She keeps telling me she's going to die before I ever come back to the States (nice, right?), so, I'm thinking she'll be a happy camper about me being home for a lil bits. Dad and I were thinking we'd surprise her with me coming home, as in he'd randomly take her to the Monterey airport to have lunch or something, then I'd show up. Thing is, I'm scared she'd have a heart attack or a stroke..seriously! I'm thinking it might be for the best that I tell her about a week or so before I fly back that I'm coming, that way, she won't be counting down the days for the next several months. She did that last time and it drove me a lil nuts :) At least I know I'm loved, right?

Once I'm over my lovely jet lag, spent some time with my family and friends, I'll be heading up to good ole' Washington to visit my Aunt & cousins. Whether or not my Dad will be joining me, that's to be determined, but I need to go up there to see 'em :) I'm really looking forward to it since where they live is SO SO gorgeous during the fall, plus I haven't seen them since June 2009! Lots to catch up on...

Since I'll be stateside for two months, I'm really hoping to be able to head over to Vegas for a lil get away. I haven't been there since August 2007... that may not seem like very long, but I like going there cause of all the fun and mayhem you can get into. Given, I'm older and wiser now (for the most part), so I wouldn't be going out and getting trashed, but, it'd be nice to go there, relax, be a tourist and just have some fun with some friends that I probably won't be seeing again for another few years. I've managed to find some amazing deals in terms of hotels and flights, so now I just gotta get a group of us together to have some fun! 

AHHHH!! I'm excited!