No way, Newark

Our trip was a delight and a wonderful experience for us all, but it is certainly good to be home. Toward the end, we were all really starting to miss Nate and we were most worried that there would be issues with getting back to the US since our flight from Rome was on Alitalia, an airline known for its strikes and financial issues in recent months. However, Alitalia was great, our 5 checked bags made it to Newark with no problem, and we retrieved them to go through Customs and then rechecked them in with Continental for the last leg of our journey from Newark to Nashville. We ate some lunch, got to our gate around 3 PM for our 4:55 PM flight, and were on the phone with Mom saying that everything looks on time and we'd be seeing her that night, when BAM! (as Maggie would say) - our flight was cancelled. There were big storms around the region and flights were not able to make it in, so our plane wouldn't be there to take us away. OK - we went to the customer service center and then got on standby for later flights that night with a "for sure" booking on the 6:25 AM flight the next day. Good thing, because one by one, everything else got cancelled that night. By the time our last hope for getting home on Tuesday went away, all hotels were booked in the near area and we ended up spending the night on the floor of the Newark airport! What an interesting end to our trip. We finally got home around lunch time on Wednesday, and our bags finally arrived by courier at 5:30 PM on Thursday. At left is a picture of us all huddled around Nate, fighting for his attention. He recognized us all instantly with big smiles and kicks, which, needless to say, did all our hearts good.