Christmas episode 1

This is a long time coming, I know - but hey, I've been a very busy woman ... busy catching up on my sleep! The first 2 sets of pictures are my non-family pictures.

I mentioned I got stuck in Minneapolis because of snow:

"Instead of flying into Minneapolis, Minnesota, our flight was detoured to Fargo, South Dakota due to snow. So we sat on the runway for a few hours waiting for the runways in Minneapolis to be cleared, the plane to be refueled, and a new departure time to be set. We finally arrived in Minneapolis 5 hours late and I had missed all the connections to DFW (my final destination in Texas) so after standing in line for another 2-3 hours, I had a ticket booked for Monday morning to go to DFW. As I'd been awake and in transit for 22 hours, I wasn't up for airport sleeping; so I spoke to a few strangers and decided to book a hotel together to split the cost ... I started with sharing a hotel room with one stranger and in 30 minutes it had gone to 4 of us ... so I suggested getting 2 hotels. I stayed with a girl called Melissa who was absolutely ace. If we lived closer, I'm sure we would fast become good friends. I'm telling you, being stranded in an airport makes you bond with strangers! Melissa and I headed to the hotel where we ordered some pizza and made snow angels (after all, when life gives you lemons, you got to make lemonade...or snow angels..." Blog entry from 28 Dec

(click to enlarge - and view text on picture collage)

Jumping ahead a few days, on 2 January a friend I met at Camp Shamrock* this summer made the trek down from Oklahoma City to visit me while I was in Paris. Michelle and I were fast friends - bonding on such things as our mutual like for toilet humour and love of making fun of each other.

(click to enlarge - and view text on picture collage)

Michelle and I on the Eiffel Tower
My mom and I in front of the Eiffel Tower - Mom wasn't up for climbing it :-D

*Camp Shamrock is a summer camp in Northern Ireland I help at each summer.