Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Jet Plane

All of our friends already know about our crappy jet-plane experience, but I thought I'd record it here for later remembering.

The bare-bones are that we took off from DIA at about 5pm on a Tuesday. We circled the airport for about 2 hours, then experienced and emergency landing. We sat at the gate for 1.5 hours, during which time no one was allowed to deplane for food or any other reason. Then we took off again, circled DIA for another 45 minutes or so, and then flew to Portland. What was supposed to be a two hour flight turned into about seven hours and of course our connection was long gone. We had to stand in line to get our coupons and such for lodging and food and to make travel arrangements. By the time we got to the front of the queue, it was 12:30 at night (1:30 MT) and the kids were wired like cattle prods. Leo did endless frenetic laps on the moving escalator and Isa hung on the front of me with big red exhausted eyes and an occasional, forlorn wail. The airline offered us a flight at 6 am, meaning we'd have to make the airport at 5 am, meaning we'd have to wake up at 4am. Assuming half an hour from the gate to the hotel, and half an hour to get our children settled into sleep, that's a whopping 2.5 hours of sleep for our 3 year old and 3 month old. We politely told them to shove it and rented a car for the last leg of our journey.

We woke up when the children were ready to (still not much sleep, but better than 2.5 hours) at about 9am, got breakfast, then spent the rest of the morning (and early afternoon) visiting with a friend in town we hadn't seen in several years. It was very pleasant to see her and her kiddos.

The return trip to Denver was much more straightforward and our little ones fared much better.

Note to self: Always bring REAL food on the airplane with you, especially if you are traveling with children. (The airline did not provide any real food (only mini-pretzels - about an ounce - and sodas) to the coach passengers during our 7 hour ordeal, even the children. If we hadn't had real food to give our boy, he would have been in trouble.)

Family

I've been avoiding blogging since we came home from Oregon b/c there is so much in the forefront of my brain that I want to write about but don't feel like I can share, just in case the family ever discovers this blog. I don't want this to be an excuse for divisiveness or pain. But on the other hand, this is a place for me to record what happens in my daily life and to vent out feelings and explore my way.

So maybe for the moment I'll just say that I wish I could get along better with G's sister. Sometimes we can have a lot of fun, but it's rather fair-weather: when there are things we both enjoy, we can have fun together. When things aren't rosy, then they're black.

Ah, family. I'd like to get together with T&C sometime in the summer, and G&K&D&M another time this summer. Separate groups would be best.

Progress

Leo has made some new connections the past couple of weeks. He is suddenly able to understand how to use the computer and can count to ten. Or rather, he can recite up to ten and sometimes twelve. He can count three objects, and I haven't tested that further.

What to do for his birthday? My folks will come up to visit, maybe we'll go out to HuHot's? I'm not sure if we should do a party with some friends over or just the grandparents and the family. It would be nice to have Aidan and his family over as we went to Aidan's party in December. And we haven't seen the Schafer's since sometime in early summer.

There are things I want to get into doing soon...projects and long-term/recurring activities I'd like to start: the 2007 garden; weekly playdates with TH/RH at our house; library story time; attending the health club;...anything else?

Gary's business is doing better and better all the time, with more clients in the wings. He is raising his rates as he is substantially under-charging (both in terms of what the market will bear and what we need to simply pay our bills). You can check out his up-and-coming website at gtoprojects.com.

Snow

I'm not sure how I feel about the snow. I thought I would like it, but it's mostly just cold and wet and very dirty. Snow spreads dirt and nasty mud like nothing else. Maybe I'd feel differently if I didn't have a cream-colored carpet. I'm just not used to dressing against the snow, it's much harder to deal with than just cold air. The snow creeps in at the edges and gets everything wet and chilled.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Leavin' on a Jet Plane...

...Don't know why I volunteered for this.

Lots of packing and organization. Will we need this, that or the other? Are we allowed to bring this that or the other on the plane? Do we check both car seats, or carry both on? Do we check one and carry one? How many carry-ons do we bring? Gary's philosophy is to carry on EVERYTHING so that nothing will get lost by baggage handlers (who must all be incompetent, you know). I have gone along with this in the past, but now that we have two babies, there is no way we can bring all the bags and the children onto the plane with us. We're just going to have to have some faith in the airlines/airports. Either we check the bags or the babies. I won't offer him that choice, I may not like the answer (or like it too much).

Gary's family is very nice. We're really looking forward to seeing them. His brother and sister-in-law and their two boys, his dad and stepmom. His sister. His folks have 40 acres outside Eugene, OR. Lots of trees, lots of moisture, lots of grass and green growing things, even in the dead of winter.