It had to happen at some point

You are not expected to read about our day from Hell but it was part of the weekend and quite an adventure so I want to write it down for the girls......not that they will ever forget it.

This is the part of our trip that wasn't planned, it wasn't fun even though we tried to stay perky and it isn't something I ever want to do again.

The girls and I were listed for an 8.00am flight on Thursday. American Airlines (AA) doesn't fly directly to Seattle (Sea-Tac) so we had a layover in Dallas, Fort Worth (DFW). When you fly stand-by layovers are not something you want, E.V.E.R. they can really mess things up. The flight, if direct, is approx 5,5 hours so with baggage claim, check in etc etc it would be a long day under the best of circumstances. Our day was a total of 19 freaking hours. Yes, 19 hours long. We got bumped from so many flights and walked so many terminals it wasn't funny. Once we were finally strapped into our seats and heading for Dallas, 5 hours late, I questioned my sanity. At one point Lily said to me, "Maybe this is a sign". I answered her in a fakely chipper voice and said not to be silly and that we had started this whole reunion idea and that we were going to be there. HAH.

As we approached DFW the pilot said we were trying to beat a weather system there and would be in a holding pattern for a few minutes before we could land. A few short minutes later he came back on the P.A. system saying that the bad weather had beaten us there and that we were being redirected to Love Field where we would refuel and wait for clearance to head back to DFW. I can't tell you here exactly what I said in my head as it is really rude. We stayed at Love Field for 2 hours on the plane just killing time!

When we finally made it back to DFW Jacob's friend Jeff who also works for AA met us at the gate when we landed, ran and got the girls a bottle of water, told me he had listed us on the next flight out, told me he didn't think we had a cat in hells chance of getting on it and then proceeded to show us where the best restaurant in the terminal was after we were bumped. He then came back up to see us and told us our chances were good and if we needed anything we could ring him. He was fantastic, he has 4 yr old twins and knows exactly what we were going through. We made the flight. We would be arriving in Sea-Tac 7 hours late. Our friends were waiting. Jeff also gave me a tiny slip of paper that the employees print out of the computer all the time. It showed the flights for Sunday, all 15 of them and it showed every single one of them, full. Fuey, I would put that out of mind and enjoy the weekend.

The Eastcoast has been having really bad thunderstorms and they were messing everything up. Even though our flights were all listed as "open" as the weather changed and flights were cancelled more and more people were being backlogged, onto the very flights we were attempting to get on.

When we arrived at Sea-Tac we located the rental car and took off in the dark through the twisty lower mountain roads to our destination. I loved that part. No street lights, a place I have never been and windy roads that just disappear in front of your eyes. Thank goodness for GPS systems.We finally arrived at John and Nancy's at 10.24pm. and didn't even get lost.

At this point I had no idea that this day was going to be a piece of cake in comparison to our return voyage.

On Sunday, after the fantastic weekend you just read about, I set my alarm for 2.45am and got myself ready. At 3am I woke up the girls and we said goodbye to our lovely hosts. I drove the same windy roads back to the airport with nary a SNAFU and returned the car. As the kidlets were getting out a lady approached and asked if we enjoyed the car and before I could answer she gasped and asked if I had noticed this damage when I picked up the car on Thursday. Damage, what damage? You see I was so glad to have the car on Friday and finally be able to get where we were going that I just threw the kids in, buckled them up and jumped in the drivers seat. I took a few minutes to find the lights, wipers and set up my GPS and then we were gone. It was so dark in the car park that I had to use the light on my phone to find the light switch so even if I had looked for this damage I wouldn't have been able to see it anyway. The car remained parked all weekend until I drove it back to the airport on Sunday.

Miss Snippy Pants, with great drama, produces an accident/incident report and asks me to explain how it happened. I ever so politely told her I was not filling out that form since I had no idea. She said it may have already been reported and that she was just doing her job since she didn't know if the person who had it before me did it. I had no choice. Alrighty then Miss Snippy Pants since you are not being very friendly and since I DO NOT do mornings at a normal hour I guess we are going head to head on this. I placed the girls a safe distance away and I filled out her form but not before carefully scratching out the part where it states I know how it happened. Then I gave it back to her snippy little self, explained it's not always about doing your job but how you do your job and took the girls and I to the terminal. It was a sign.

The check in lines were bad, really bad but we trudged through. Finally after the usual security drama we were at our gate and saw ourselves listed as 17, 18 and 19 on the list. Say what? The furthest down a list that I have ever been, until this weekend is 4th. I knew we were not leaving Sea-Tac at 6.00am. Turned out we didn't get on the next 5 flights. We just kept hopping from gate to gate. Jacob and I were in constant contact and he told me to find a code sharing airline and ask to get zed listed. He didn't know what was involved but to just get on it. Yes siree.. We went to another carrier and talked to them, they sent us back to AA and then with the necessary forms in hand we went back to the other carrier (TOC). We shot through security, ran through the terminals and arrived at the gate just as they closed it up tight, as if that was a surprise.

So we rolled over to the next one and we made it. As we were boarding an older man boarded to, also flying stand by. He started chatting to the girls and kept touching Lily's head. I hate that. He noticed we were all in separate rows and offered to help with Lily. So not going to happen buddy! Now in this mans defense I am sure he was just a good old boy from the south but I am not turning my kidlet over to ANYONE. Thankfully the crew fixed it all before Mr. Touchy Feely could touch her hair again. During the flight he came up to me and gave me his phone number and offered us his house to stay in. Now I am sure he was being sweet and I was being sweet to, he even offered to ring my husband and speak with him. I thanked him profusely and explained that my husbands Uncle was going to meet us and take us to his house. (all lies)

We would be landing in Atlanta at 10pm. The girls were amazing this whole time. Every now and again one of us would get snippy, or down but it lasted minutes and then we were back to our usual selves. There is one problem with this Atlanta flight, there are no more connections that night and we need a place to stay. After we landed I rang Jacob and he told me to find and employee from TOC and ask them if they had a stress Hotel. They didn't. They did however offer us a voucher for a hotel, yeah no kidding pretty darned nice, huh, and gave us over night bags. You see our luggage had gone to Miami on that very first flight.

We made it to the airport and 11ish. I gave Rosie the room key and told her room 326. She kept trying and the door wouldn't open so finally I started slamming the card in the lock. Thankfully Lily noticed that it was the wrong room we should have been at 316...oops. By now the girls have been up for 20 hours and once we got in the room we got the giggles really bad. After a bath and a quick look through our over night bags we changed into our handy dandy sleepshirts. At midnight Lily decides she is hungry so I fed them right there in the bed. All I had were granola bars, raisins, chips, and some chewies. Nice dinner. Do I need to add that they loved it. With the detergent from the overnight bags I washed all our undies and then wrung them out them the best I could before realizing that heat dries things much faster so I ironed everyones knickers dry and Rosies socks. I was going to use the microwave but figured the way my luck was going I'd probably set them all on fire and then we'd have to fly home commando.I set the alarm for 4 hours later and went to sleep.

This morning I woke up, cursing life in general and jumped in the shower. No straightening brushes for my hair, no lovely moisturisers etc etc. I drank some God awful coffee and woke up the girls. They were not happy but got dressed in yesterdays clothes and their nicely pressed undies! We headed back to the terminal. It was Hell. The world and his brother was there and going through security. Once we were cleared I fed them some tasty airport treats and we walked to our gate chanting we're going home today. WRONG! Bumped off of another flight. I rang Jacob and told him I was renting a car and driving. The voice of reason said it was a very bad idea. After checking the flight status for todays flights with TOC Jacob told me to cancel myself from their list and head back to AA. We headed past the do not re-enter sign and crawled to AA's check in line. There was a small line so we checked in electronically and butter my buns and call me a biscuit, we got seat assignments. I swear we nearly started to cry. We knew we were going to have to run because we had to go back through security again. The line was even worse. It took 40 minutes. We got to the gate and boarded almost immediately. No sooner was her seatbelt fastened Rosie fell asleep and I woke her when we landed in Miami.

Lily on the other hand learnt how to blow bubbles with gum and spent the whole flight blowing them. It's a right of passage as I kid and after 34 hours of travel I found it really funny. It was funny watching her face, funny when she spat everywhere whilst blowing and funnier than anything ever before when her gum shot out of her mouth and into the aisle. Yes, I know it isn't funny but it was then.

Hubby met us at and said he had bad news. We had no luggage and both airlines were denying ever having it. Did we want to go home and he would work it out or did I want to deal with it now. Well, I thought now was a great time so off we went and whaddayaknow, our luggage was there. Some people do their jobs better than others. It took the lady I approached all of 2 seconds to find it for us. The guy Jacob used tried and tried.

I'm not flying again EVER AGAIN IN MY LIFE. Yes, I know that's not true either.

I have a total of 19 boarding passes for our troubles, 19. Geesh that's alot.

Our lovely sleeping attire courtesy of TOC

One little hobo sleeping in the airport on a bench.
Another tiny hobo sleeping on an airport bench.

And finally I give you bubble girl in all her grossness. It's really loud because of aircraft noise. I frankly, was happy to hear that aircraft noise.

We have flown stand by for many years without anything like this ever happening. Sure we have all heard the horror stories but people are always more willing to share their horror stories than their happy ever after stories. The airlines were fabulous, all of this was not their fault at all. I mean lets face it, do they control the weather? No, they don't. Did they need to offer us a hotel voucher? Again, No, but they did. The price was right on these flights, if you get my drift. We were not missing school, an adoption, a funeral or anything, so there you have it. Now the time they put our plane out of service when we were flying to China to adopt Rosie and we had paid full price for all of our seats, well that was hairy but it didn't change anything, we were still powerless and they still offered us a solution and we made it on time and all is well.

I will do it again. Probably quite soon I am sure.