Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Planes, Trains and Automobiles Pt. 2

It started the night before our trip. I was talking to Billy's mom on the phone. She was offering moral support, knowing the woman gets stuck doing most of the preparation for a family trip across the States. I, of course, was pulling my hair out. I decided to jump in the shower and scratch an item off the list. I took Pumpkie with me and placed her in the baby bath tub inside the shower.

Within two minutes, she started grunting. No, no, no, no.....I tried stopping it. I tried making her laugh and distracting her. Nope! It happened. She pooped in the bath tub, for the very first time. And she chose the worst possible time to do it, too. On top of everything else, I now had a mess to clean up. Aye, aye, aye....

We finished packing about 11pm. We finally feel asleep by 11:30pm and the alarm went off at 4:00am. We were out the door by 5:30am. One car seat, 3 bags to check in, 3 carry ons, and two children. It wasn't easy to get around quickly, but we managed pretty well. We get on the bus, played games with the kids, and relaxed for the first time in 48 hours. Ahhhh......wait. Why are we not moving? Traffic? Are you kidding me? Oh no, it's a holiday weekend.....big sigh!



We finally make it to the airport by 8:00am. Our flight departs at 9:08am and we have a lay over in Denver. Our flight leaves from Denver at 1:15pm and is supposed to arrive in Minneapolis at 4:07pm.

We check in and dump half of our luggage, lightening our load. We breeze through security and head over to our gate. Everything appears to be normal and on time. We find a seat and let the kids play until we are ready to board. At 9:00am, I see everyone starting to congregate near the departing gate, so we move over. The lady behind the desk says something over the loud speaker, but she is drowned out by another lady over another loud-er speaker, and I can't hear a fling flangin' thing. I move toward the desk to find out what the overshadowed lady was saying. There are 2 people in front of me.

As I'm standing there she rattles off her "bad" news. Our flight is being delayed an hour because they have to change a tire. Now I know why there is a line forming behind me.....

After 15 minutes standing in line, and it didn't move, they announce that they are moving over to the next gate. Everyone behind me, runs over to the other gate. Now, I'm stuck in the back of the line versus being in the front of the line. Son of a biscuit maker!!! I was ready to lose my mind.

After an hour of standing in line and not moving even an inch, they start boarding us onto the "tire" plane. We are told they would be handling our connecting flight over in Denver. So on we went. Belle played tic tac toe with Billy and Pumpkie napped. It was smooth. We landed in Denver two and a half hours after our connecting flight left.....with our luggage, which landed in Minneapolis, without us. Just fabulous!

We were waiting in another long ass line, until the kids started acting up. It was then, that I realized that all airports should have a kids area. Kids can play, exerting energy, out of the way of other passengers who are trying to get from point A to point B without tripping over our children. But since they didn't have that option available to us, we used the only thing we knew would entertain the kids for at least an hour....the walkway!

We finally got through the ridiculously long line and found a flight, on another airline, to Chicago. They connected us to Minneapolis the next day, but we would have to stay overnight in Chicago. I looked in the diaper bag....we had 3 diapers left. I panicked!! I went on a diaper search. Do you know that there is not one diaper to be bought in the entire Denver airport?

 Oh well, on to the walkway. I will allow my children to walk/glide across that thing until we leave. Why? Because it is that, or allow them to scream there hearts out on the entire flight over to Chicago, or allow them to get in your way while you try and shave a few seconds off your walk across the airport. Hmmmm, decisions, decisions??

From the land of Peyton Manning, to the land of Jay Cutler, we go....


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