I can't believe I last wrote on May 8. Shame on me! I guess in my defense I was busy getting ready for our trip to Seattle for my brother Benjamin's wedding. It was so great! We were in Seattle for 2 1/2 days for the wedding, and then we went up to Olympic National Park for a day, then up to Victoria, B.C. for a day and a half, and then back to Seattle and home again.
The trip involved a few too many harrowing airplane adventures for my taste, but all's well that ends well, right?
The excitement started last Wednesday and Thursday when a series of thunderstorms blew through Austin (yay, rain!!). The last of the thunderstorms blew through Thursday morning, so I thought we'd be fine for our afternoon flight out of Austin. We were not. A whole bunch of flights had been delayed out of Austin from the morning storms, pushing all the other flights off schedule. Our flight to Houston ended up being delayed 4 hours, well past the time our connecting flight was supposed to leave Houston. The storm had moved over to Houston, causing additional delays for the flights leaving from there. The airline people told us our connecting flight was also delayed, but even so it was going to be tight making the connection. Finally, they were able to squeeze us onto a different flight leaving for Houston at 5:00 (delayed for about 9 hours-- it was supposed to have left at 8:30 that morning!), which was in about 15 minutes. So we dashed through security, and managed to get to the gate in time to board the plane. The flight attendants were hurrying everyone to their seats to try to make the small window of time that we could take off. We all got on, buckled in, and the plane taxied to the runway. Just as the plane's engines were revving up, the captain was informed that the Houston airport had closed due to wind shear from the thunderstorms in the area. So we sat there in the plane on the tarmac for THREE HOURS. There was free TV for about 15 minutes before it went to pay-only, and after that everyone just sat there. Finally Ben piped up and asked if they could at least turn the TV's back on, which they did. They also passed out snacks and drinks, and the flight attendants were about as happy and peppy as they could be, trying to keep everyone calm. FINALLY we got word the airport was open again, and we took off.
We got in to Houston around 9:00, and sat there for 2 1/2 hours until our flight to Seattle finally left. Ben went and picked up some food JUST as the food court was closing. It was lucky we got food, otherwise we would have been tired and starving. As it was, another family next to us didn't make it to the food court on time, and they had a little boy, probably 3 years old, who was hungry. Brigham went over and gave him 3 fruit snack packs from his stash in his backpack, which was very sweet (it is our tradition to buy fruit snacks as a special treat for the boys to take on the plane in case of emergencies exactly like this:-)).
Our flight from Houston to Seattle was 4 1/2 hours long, so we didn't get in to Seattle until after 2 AM Seattle time, 4 AM Austin time. The boys slept a little on the plane, but not a whole lot. They were tired boys. Finally, though, we were in Seattle. Ben left me with the boys and the baggage by the baggage claim while he went to get our rental car. Soon he called me, telling me that they had our reservation, but the person at the desk didn't know anything about the hand controls I had requested. Not again!! After a bunch of talking back and forth to the Alamo people, and checking what rentals were available from other companies, I finally called the Alamo people on the 1-800 number, and they chewed out the guy at the desk, telling him they had sent the request for hand controls over 3 days before. The guy eventually called his manager at home, waking him up, only to be told that they DID have the van with the hand controls after all. The trouble was that we had been scheduled to pick it up at 10 PM when our flight was originally scheduled. Since then, a different shift of people came on duty, and the new person at the front desk wasn't told about the hand controls. So eventually we DID get the van with hand controls, although it took about 45 minutes to work it all out.
Finally we were on the road heading to our hotel in Everett, about 30 minutes north of Seattle. Our GPS decided to take us on the "scenic route," sending us on some obscure highway, before spitting us out onto surface streets THROUGH downtown, and finally sending us back onto I-5, which had connected on to the airport in the first place. Huh??? So a 1/2 hour drive turned into 45 minutes and my patience was definitely worn thin. THEN, when we finally got to the hotel, the person didn't know about our reservation. My mom had reserved rooms for Friday and Saturday night, but I had called in to reserve our room one night early. Finally, after some more delay, they figured out that they counted our early reservation as a no-show, since we didn't arrive until 5:00 AM. They were going to charge us a no-show fee! Anyway, it all worked out, and finally we were in our room, and tucked into bed by around 5:30 AM, 7:30 AM Austin time. It was a very, very long night. :-)
I'm going to end there, or else tonight will also end up a very long night, but here is a picture of my poor boys after we finally landed at the Seattle airport. They were soooo tired, but such troopers putting up with everything.
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