Our Travails

Well, our trip was definitely exciting! Where should I start? How about the 2 hours that it took us to check in at the Delta counter or almost missing our connection in JFK? It wasn’t all bad….I enjoyed a very luxurious business class flight from JFK to Abu Dhabi. Steve let me sit by myself on the long flight and the girls were absolute angels.
Starting at BWI we waited in line at the Delta counter for about an hour and then found out that a couple of our bags were too heavy. (I knew that they were going to be) Because our flight was delayed we decided to repack some of them. That took Steve and I another 30 minutes of sweat and tears, but by God we got them all under 50 pounds! By the way….we had TEN check ins. By the time we got our boarding passes, we had been at the airport for 2 hours and still hadn’t been through security J Luckily security was a breeze . We got to our gate and found out that our flight was delayed indefinitely due to some computer glitch.
We left BWI 2 hours after we were supposed to and prayed all the way to JFK that we would make our connection (we had a 3 hour layover). We got to JFK and had to go to another terminal to get our boarding passes running the whole way. Which is not so much fun with tired 4 & 5 year olds and six carry-ons. We get to the ticket counter at 10pm (our flight was scheduled to leave at 1050). We were promptly told that we were too late. I went into meltdown mode and irritated everyone there enough that they allowed us to get our boarding passes. The only condition was that we had to run (which we did until we hit security and came to a screeching halt). Some nice people let us cut in line and went through in a record amount of time (pretty impressive with 3 laptops and 2 kids). We then proceded to run all out to the gate (which was the 2nd to the last). We made it to the gate after near cardiac death (I consider myself in decent shape, but carrying a 4 year old and 3 bags while running nearly did me in!). We got on the plane sweaty and exhausted and didn’t take off for another hour J
The girls slept a good portion of the 12 hour flight (Ashli was asleep before we left the gate) and we all enjoyed the amenities of business class including a seat that reclines completely and free booze (well Steve and I did that part). All in all it wasn’t a horrible trip(the business class seats made up for the bad parts). There were only a few meltdowns (mostly mine) and it went faster than I expected. Now…should I tell you about our lost baggage????