In The Beginning

It's Tuesday, April 8th. We arrived in Honolulu last thursday. i'll start with a week ago... i got online to check in for our 9am flight from San Diego only to discover that the airline we had booked with was shut down for bankruptcy! No time to worry though, we had another plane to catch. My Mother dropped us off at Indianapolis airport at 5 pm tuesday, we were in the air at 7pm. It was my first time flying that i can remember, i was a little nervous. The kids were thrilled with the experience! Even though i was nervous, a great peace settled down on me as we left the ground and i know that GOD has us where he wants us. We arrived about 6 hours later in San Diego. Trying to sleep in an airport in not a pleasant experince, but the kids were incredibly well behaved! About 4am wednesday, i got in line for an alternate airline that was accepting tickets from the airline that had shut down. Around 8am, we were in line for "stand by", meaning that we could get a plane as seats were available. 11am: "No more flights today, try again tomorrow." AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! We all looked pretty haggard and were in dire need of sleep, so we broke down and got a hotel. We walked a few blocks from the hotel and spent $12 on the best greek food i've had in my life! After about a half hour walk on the bay, it was bedtime. Thursday 4am: Back in line. We have to check in again to get a flight. 8am: back in line for "stand by". 11am: Bingo!! We've got seats! Thank GOD! The plane was to stop in Maui and we were to catch another flight to Honolulu. As we were about to land, i discovered that i was missing the important half of one of our tickets! Lauren and i looked for a few minutes around our seats to no avail. Time to give up. i opened my bible to Psalms "A song of praise for GOD'S provision" the heading said. Faith, We've been working on that alot the past month. Lauren asked me if maybe i put the tickets in the... There it is! Stuck in a piece of wall trim 2 feet in front of us! Thank you JESUS!!! Time to land. Hawaii is soooooo beautiful from the air! Thursday 2pm: There's room for us on the next flight and it's leaving right now! WoooHooo! One problem... the ticket lady says there's been no ticket created for Noah. Looks like we're gonna miss this flight. "Wait a minute" she says "Where is he?" "He's right behind me. Why?" She peers at Noah, "I need you to walk really fast, ok." "Um, ok" She scribbles on a Boarding pass(for children under 2) She pushes us through the door and says loudly "Hurry, the plane is leaving right now!" as she handed our "tickets" to the ticket lady who seemed to think that something was suspicious. Whew! We're on! 2:30pm Honolulu! As we stepped outside the airport, Noah looked up at the mountains and said "I don't ever wanna go home, this place is beautiful!" And it is. The air is sweet and warm. The mountains are lush, and the water is so, so blue.