J.P. and I flew to Minnesota this afternoon. My cousin is getting married this weekend, and we decided it was a good opportunity to come home and visit family that we haven't seen since Christmas.

We flew Midwest Airlines, which we'd never done before. It meant connecting in Milwaukee, but it also meant bigger, leather, first-class-like seats, and these . . .



They were baked on board the plane, and you should've smelled them as the flight attendant brought them down the aisle. When he saw them, J.P. pulled out the airline's magazine. You know, the one with all their route maps in the back? Yeah, that one. He wanted to see where else we could go on this wonderful airline that serves warm cookies. There were lots of choices. I see more Midwest Airlines in our future.

As we were coming in for a landing, I managed to get a glimpse of this:



It's my old house, which is obviously in the flight path. Once when I was on my way home from a business trip, I spotted it from the air and noticed that my then-boyfriend's truck was parked in the driveway. I freaked him about a bit when I called him from the airport . . . "What were you doing at my house 30 minutes ago?"

And of course, since I wrote about it yesterday and then saw it from the air today, we had to drive by and see how it's holding up.



The trees and shrubs are a bit bigger (do you think they look better now, Karen?), and the big trees in the back have been cut down. They should've come down while I lived there, but I couldn't afford it. It looks pretty much the same, but I was disappointed to see weeds growing up in the landscaping and behind the picket fence. I wonder what the inside looks like now.

But once we got to my sister's, all thoughts of the old house were gone. Because this is who was here to greet us. My three-year-old namesake, Lauren Sharkey. What a goof! The next few days should be very entertaining.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15, 2006 at 12:35 AM.