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Early this morning, Chad and Brian dropped me off at the airport. I warned Chad to not hug me tight this time. :-)

I had such a great time in Seattle, as I have already told you. It was hard for me to leave. Marshall has captured my heart - well, he, Josiah, Annika, and Aurelia. My flights were good, including a gorgeous view of Mt. Rainier with the coral sunrise in its background and a thick layer of clouds below the middle of it. It is so majestic! The Rocky Mountains were snow covered, and very beautiful.

In Denver I had a new item for lunch. It was a hot dog pretzel at Auntie Anne's. I thought it was delicious and hit the spot.

Disembarking in Minneapolis, I scanned the people who would be boarding the plane once we vacated, to see if they were dressed in heavy jackets as I was. (By the way, my heavy jacket with hood and mittens sticking out of the pockets, looked rather out of place in Seattle where the temps were in the 50's. But it sure felt good the morning I departed Minneapolis and the temperature was 8 with a wind chill of zero!) Any way, back to what I wanted to say. In checking out the folks, I thought I was seeing the back of my cousin and her husband. I decided to go to their aisle to see and sure enough, Diane and Dave were sitting there, on their way to Philadelphia. Now, what are the chances of that?! And get this, while they had been sitting there, Diane asked me if my brother was at the airport too because they heard is name on the over-head page. As soon as I was able, I called Jerry's cell to see if indeed he was at the airport, and he told me no, he had been working all day in Rochester. Now that's funny too!

After visiting with my cousins for a little bit and calling Jerry, I made it to baggage claim where I discovered my lone bag circling the carousel. Apparently everyone else had gotten their bags and left. This has never happened to me before.

My dear friend, Nancy, picked me up in her horse and sleigh, the one with the silver bells. [That's she calls it. Hee hee.] On our way to my home, we noticed the gorgeous sliver of a moon and one very bright star, which I said must be a planet. In a little bit, Nancy said, "Now there are two stars, or perhaps it's a planet and a star." Well, they just confirmed on TV that what we saw was Jupiter, Venus and the moon. It was a beautiful sight against the clear, black sky.