So long, suckers!

Most of the planes here have propellors!

Because our flight was to depart San Juan at 12:00 p.m., it qualified as an "early departure." I had to pick up special luggage tags that would distinguish our bags from the "late departures." This whole early/late division seems like a good idea, but since the sort criteria was whether the flight is before 1:30 p.m., it was pretty useless. I'll draw another comparison to Royal Caribbean here. RC has more than 2 groups of disembarkation times. It divides the passengers into many groups based on their flight departure times. I think our flight out of Miami was about the same time last year and we got there with a couple hours to spare.

Since we were early departures, we had to report to the auditorium at 7:45 a.m., where we proceeded to wait over an hour before anybody was allowed to leave the ship. I felt bad for the people with 10 a.m. flights because it turned it that flight times didn't matter. Carnival released people based on how close they sat to the front of the auditorium! Therefore, it didn't matter if your flight was the earliest one, it mattered that your seat was closest to the stage. People like Josh's family and me who decided to eat breakfast wound up stuck in the back and waiting until 9:30 to get out of the auditorium.

We got to the airport in time and even had some time to wait and talk to each other without the Nocheeses (finally!). I spent the time anticipating getting to see my little morons who were waiting back home (see left). When our plane arrived, we watched the eager-faced passengers step into the terminal. Undoubtedly, some of these people were the Carnival Destiny's next victims, fresh faced and filled with optimism about their cruise vacation.

I guess my expectations about seeing Morty and Eli were a bit high because when I walked into my apartment, they both ran and hid under the bed. I think they were scared by the luggage. After a few minutes, Morty poked his head out and stared at me for a couple seconds. Then, as though he suddenly remembered who I was (I could hear the shriek of "Mommy!!!" in his head), he ran over to me and head butted me like there was no tomorrow.

And then I was home.

(Eli took several hours to say hello to me because he's a scaredy cat.)