I slept about five hours last night before my brain woke me up to worry some more, about all the things I am supposed to be getting done, but particularly about what in the world we were going to do without all our clothes, as we still had no word on the whereabouts of our luggage.
I called the Continental baggage hotline about 7:30 a.m., and miracle of miracles, our bags were already on flight 2775 from Newark to Grand Rapids. Jim went to pick them up when the flight arrived at 8:50 a.m., and everything was intact. The washer and dryer are now puffing away, cleaning our week's worth of dirty clothes. The Aidan and the Esme are also puffing away, busily constructing their Lego and Playmobil sets that we bought for them at FAO Schwarz in New York City.
After Jim dropped our bags off at home, he and Aidan went to Best Buy to get me a new hard drive (adieu, 350 GB, bonjour, 500 GB), and Esme and I went off to the pediatrician's office (she is fine, just a little female thing) and Target to get started on our grocery shopping. Having had lunch at the Cafe Connection, we are all back at home now, the kids working hard on the aforesaid constructions. Jim is working for an actual living, and here I am, unpacking, baking a birthday cake, doing laundry, and working on restoring my computer. Right now I am downloading Windows XP Service Pack 3 - ooohhh, fun. It does leave me plenty of time in between clicks to work on summarizing our vacation, though!