The Return

So you get it right? Our trip was terrific! The only parts I was dreading really was the travel itself. The flights. Nothing worse than trying to entertain a 1-year-old, a very active 1-year-old who is not to keen on the actual feeling of flying, on a long flight. But we did it once and we can do it again. Plus it sure as heck beats the 30+ hour drive.

We get to the airport, drop off the car, take the shuttle, get all our stuff (and there is a lot of it!) in the door around 10 a.m. They are calling the last call for the Baltimore flight. The direct flight...not ours. Hmmm. When we get up to the front we ask if we can get on that Baltimore. The guy says, sadly, "Standby is closed. If you'd been here 10 minutes ago maybe...." He goes on to torture us by saying, "they are seats available and it would cost nothing to get on the flight." Seriously, dude, just stop.

But he was a kind hearted person indeed. He saw my disheartened look and with a little nod, called to his co-workers, "I have the last check-in for Baltimore." Hallelujah. The co-workers are very confused as we had been standing there the whole time but whatever. The glitch is the flight is at 10:38. Of course there is a line at security. Of course we get double checked. Of course this is the kind of airport that you have to get on a shuttle to get to your gate. And ours is the very last gate at the very end of the airport. Of course we have two kids and plenty of carry-on stuff.

But we prove we still got it and we book it through that airport, sockless kids and all. People were actually cheering us on. But we have got to make that direct flight.

And we did. That wonderful Air Tran employee saved us 3 hours and a bit of sanity.

Don't get me wrong keeping that little one occupied for the 4 and half hour flight was no picnic. WE had gone through the books, stickers and colors all before we took off. She and I thoroughly familiarized ourselves with the safety procedures (if she could talk better surely she could lead that preflight demonstration.) We went through every snack we had: cheese crackers, fruit snacks, YoGos, lollipops plus the pretzels and cookies from Air Tran...the one down side of catching that flight was we had no time to get anything to eat---eeek!) So they were thoroughly sugared up to boot. But we got creative and made sock puppets, put stickers all over everything we could reach (I am sure the flight attendants loved that! they were removable stickers of course) and ahhhh, finally took a long nap.