Airplanes, Airports and Delays–OH MY!

 

For the July 4th week we took a trip up to Joe’s parents house (aka, Nana and Papa) to combine a visit with attending one of Joe’s high school friend’s wedding.  We decided to fly out of Orlando (about 1.5 hours away) because it was much, much cheaper.  The day started out great and the kids were so excited to get on a plane (we’ve talked about it for the last two months and about how they needed to buckle their seat belts – a big issue during our Christmas flight).  Madison had decided that she would not only buckle her seat belt, but also help Daddy and Mama buckle theirs!

Joe and Myra were upgraded to First Class (yeah), but Myra found out the day before the kids were still back in coach.  Although perhaps a more relaxing arrangement, we decided it was probably not the best…After a long time on the phone we got it worked out and there happened to be lots of extra space so we were all upgraded!  Madison and Jonathon in their big seats:

            

Once at the Newark airport our 3 hour layover turned into 4, then turned into a cancelled flight!  As many of you know, there isn’t much to entertain an adult in an airport for more than an hour, let alone two almost 3-year olds for 4 hours!  Jonathon started this game of climbing through the beams and we didn’t really care how many strange looks we got – they were entertained (the people movers were also quite entertaining):

                           

It’s a long, LONG story, but after lots of phone calls and standing at the customer service counter for over an hour (with only one big meltdown – this may have been an combination child/adult meltdown…) we ended up rushed to a plane into Baltimore instead of Harrisburg.  Jonathon managed to get about 15 minutes of sleep (finally) on this flight:

After 14 hours of travel (btw – it only takes 17 hours to DRIVE) we were at Nana and Papa’s house – phew!