Cayman Islands - Day 1

Today was exactly what it should have been - a packing and preparing day. Our flight was due to leave LAX at 10:45 PM, a red eye to Georgetown, Grand Cayman, British West Indies with a layover in Miami. Both of us spent the day finishing up our DVD of our Sierra backpacking trip so we could show it to Sarah's grandparents once we got to the Caymans. Once Jared was done with FilmED at 4 PM, we got the last of our things together and headed out for Sarah's aunt Kerri's house, which is just 5 minutes from the airport in El Segundo. Surprisingly the traffic wasn't too terrible, and we got there in about an hour. We picked up Sarah's cousins Alexander and Andrew and their luggage and went to wait inside the airport while Sarah's mom and Kerri went back for the two other kids and Jesus, Kerri's husband.

About 20 minutes later they showed up along with Del and Linda, Sarah's grandparents, and we proceeded to the self check-in kiosks. The check-in process took awhile given that we had 12 people , but eventually we got it done and went through security as well, where all that was confiscated was Alexander's toothpaste. We made the trek to our gate, 48A, as Linda stopped along the way to buy a KitKat bar for everybody (it's sort of a travel tradition that she does for the grandkids whenever they travel together). Once we found a big enough circle of vacant chairs, we all unloaded our carry-ons. Kerri's clan (as they definitely are with 6 people) headed to Burger King, while the rest of us opted for Chili's. The waitress put together enough tables and chairs for six of us and we slowly but surely got our order through and processed. Sarah had a bowl of potato soup and a side Caesar salad, which Doug shared with her along with his own cup of soup. When boarding time finally rolled around, we clambered onto the plane in a semi-orderly fashion and took our seats, the two of us next to Jamie and Jared somewhere up front by himself, having taken Doug's assigned seat.
The five hour flight went by fairly quickly, possibly because our last flight was 11 hours! We both slept off and on until we arrived at Miami International at 7-something AM Miami time (4-something AM to our weary bodies). Sounds like time to switch over to Day 2! .....