Back to the States...again!

I'm not the greatest at keeping up with this blog but I keep telling myself I'm going to stick with it and not give up on it entirely. I have been meaning to write about our quick trip to D.C. last month...mainly because I feel like I have to keep defending myself about why we've been back to the states so many times since coming here in July (3 times...which is a lot to some people considering many military families don't go back at all during their 3 year tour).

Eric was invited to a wedding in Baltimore in April. He spoke with his friend and we RSVP'd yes to the wedding with the understanding that if we couldn't get on a Space A flight to the area then we wouldn't be able to make it. We just couldn't see spending $4000 for the four of us to fly to the states for only a few days. As it turned out the Wednesday before the wedding (the wedding was on Friday) there was a flight from Rota to Andrews Airforce Base. We did some research on return flights and saw that there were a few different flights out of Dover that weekend that would get us back to Rota on Sunday...like I said a very quick trip. 

The trip could not have gone more smoothly. We left Rota at 10:00 on Wednesday and arrived in D.C. at 2:00 in the afternoon. We were able to spend Wednesday and Thursday night in Northern Virginia catching up with old friends. The girls even got to visit Laila, their daycare provider! The look on Rebecca's face when she saw Laila was worth the entire trip! On Friday morning we drove to Baltimore.  We spent the day in Inner Harbor and then went to the wedding Friday night. Thanks to Melissa for coming to Baltimore and watching the kids. On Saturday we drove to Dover, DE, it was about a two hour drive and that night caught a flight back to Rota. It was a quick trip but one that I would do again.

Many people here in Rota always ask why we go back to the states so often when we have all of Europe at our fingertips to visit. The thing for us is...family and friends are important to us. If I can get on a free flight back to the states why wouldn't I do it? I miss my family and friends back home and in Virginia everyday. I don't want to go three years without seeing them. We are also taking advantage of being in Spain and have traveled a lot since being here.  The way I look at it is that we have the best of both worlds.  We have this amazing opportunity to live in Spain for three years and experience the culture and travel but we can also hop on a military flight and visit home too!

Adios!