The Travails of Travel

We made it to Wisconsin! What an adventure. I survived my first attempt at traveling with both the kids on my own, and they were wonderful, especially given the circumstances.

We left our apartment at 8:55am, 5 minutes early, and had no traffic on the way to LAX. It took a bit of searching to find the long-term parking lot, but find it I did. We checked in, even got our upgrade "signature" seats in the first row and got through security fine. We had tonnes of time to kill, so we paid way too much for a glass of milk for Sydney at Starbucks and made some friends with two little boys who were traveling with their daddy to a long cabin in Colorado.

We even got on the plane and situated, John asleep, when WHAM! A baggage handler backed his vehicle into our plane. Yes, you read that correctly, or plane was rear-ended by a baggage truck. The stopped loading passengers and told those of us who were already onboard to hang tight. 20 minutes later they unloaded us all. And then our angel appeared.

Christie - the best flight attendant ever - came over to us (I had the kids camped out on the floor watching Dora; John had woken up by then) and whispered that she secretly booked us all on the next flight out as she understands we're trying to get to WI for my sister's bridal shower and I'm traveling by myself with two small kids. She then slipped two boarding passes under my bag and told me to wait a few minutes before packing up and making my way to the gate so the other passengers didn't realise what she'd done and riot. AMEN! So an hour later we were sitting on a new plane - one where ALL the seats were the large "upgrade" kind - taking off. And then the even better part - both kids fell asleep!

We had to fly through Kansas City, Missouri and basically got off one plane and walked on to another. As we had paid for upgraded seats from LA to WI and didn't get them, they put us in row 2 in the "upgrade" seats for the hour flight to Milwaukee. And because we got to fly on two Midwest flights instead of 1, we got 4 chocolate chip cookies EACH instead of 2 each! OK, so I only ate 3 and Sydney got 2 in total, but we could have had four each.

But of course our luggage didn't make it. So I'm at my mom's house wearing my sister's undies and shirts, the same bra as yesterday and luckily a clean pair of jeans I had sent home with my mom to hem for me. John is in his last diaper, but we're heading to the store soon to get new ones. I'm going to call the luggage people again when I'm finished here as they told me it would be 4 hours, which was 5 hours ago, and all our clothes for the party this afternoon and Baptism tomorrow are smushed in the suitcase!

The picture below gives you a small idea of the MASSIVE flooding that's happening in Wisconsin that has half the major freeways closed. Luckily it's not affecting where Mom lives at all - though Mary and Laura had to stop in the Wisconsin Dells and get a hotel room for the night as they moved half a mile in 30 minutes last night trying to drive here. So they got up at 5am and finished the drive and arrived this morning. So I'm together with both my sisters and mom for the first time in 18 months - so that's cool.

The kids are loving all the attention - Sydney is beside herself with happiness at all the attention, and John is just full of giggles as usual. Bailey, Mary's dog, is also here, so it's nice having a dog around again.

Well, Laura has just walked in with new undies for me, so I can get out of Mary's! Just what you all wanted to know, I'm sure.