i place a phone call to my loving aunt sue - please don't go to any trouble, i say - but can we (meaning all SIX of us) crash on your basement floor for the night so that we're at least two hours closer to the airport in the morning...
ha ha...famous last words...so um...she cooked us dinner, set us (jason, molly and I) up in the spare bedroom, made killer popcorn in her awesome machine, made a fabulous bed for all the girls to sleep on downstairs, and kept us entertained watching the cars at the party across the street try to get up the steep hill in the now heavily falling snow...ugh.
and that was just saturday night...then comes sunday morning. 6:30am...and my uncle mike is out shoveling the foot deep snow in the driveway so we can depart for the airport. i checked the metro website, the southwest airlines website, and had a text message sent to my phone. flight was on time. we had to leave...but...um....leaving required jason, sue and mike PUSHING THE MINIVAN UPHILL the 1/4 mile or so - IN FOOT DEEP SNOW - til we could get to a main street. we're not but 3 miles down the road (mind you, we're traveling at only 30 mph on I-75!) and we get the text message that our flight was CANCELLED. ugh.
jason spends 40 minutes on the phone (most of it on hold, of course) to get us on another flight. we decide we'll keep driving towards the airport at least - and i wouldn't have recommended ANYONE driving in that weather. we get a new flight, set to leave at 4PM...great. we call my friend tara (who is dropping us off at the airport and playing keeper of our van for the week), she has no plans for the day, so we'll hang out with her - which actually meant we went to her her mom's house, which had room to accommodate the six of us. MANY thanks to our hostesses throughout this ordeal!
we check flight status at tara's mom's house about 1PM. on time. i get the text message. on time. WAHOO! jason goes to start the van and now scrape off the additional 3 inches of snow that have fallen since we've been there. just as he's headed back into the house to round us up to the car....text message....flight canceled AGAIN.
okay, so now i'm irritated. duh. i forgot to mention all the calls i'd already made after the FIRST cancellation...to the rental car company to make sure they'll hold our car...to the condo to ask that they allow jason's parents to check-in (as they were vacationing with us, but the reservation was in our name - and they had flown down on wed to spend a few days in key west...smart move!) and now this cancellation...we have to do it all again...first southwest...all operations at metro suspended...have to fly on monday. great. to condo. all set there. rental car company...no problem. and then the heartbreaker. have to call and cancel our character breakfast (as we were suppose to be eating with pooh first thing monday morning.)
tara's sister works at a nearby hotel and called and made arrangements for us to stay there for a killer rate - a hotel complete with pool. so we head to the hotel and tara's husband and kids brought rations for everyone and then we hit the pool to make the best of this worsening situation. i call disney dining. pooh character breakfast has no openings all week. princess breakfast is the same. lucky for us we can still get into chef mickeys on wed, so i make a reservation there.
we swim and then sleep. jason makes an evening run to meijers for some food (lunchables and chips!) and we spend the night on hotel beds watching christmas specials. tara is back first thing in the morning to take us to the airport and lucky for us, THIS part of the trip is relatively uneventful. our plane is coming from chicago, which was, of course, hit hard with the storm too...so it was delayed over an hour, but for the most part, the kids handled the airport waiting time very well. and the poor 'gate keeper' at the terminal had to say 'please remember, don't shoot the messenger...' most of the people flying with us had been stranded at the airport when their flights were canceled on sunday...so at least we weren't them!
the kids did well on the flight, and after getting and having to exchange our first rental car we arrived at the fully-stocked condo (thanks to jason's parents who had now been holding down the fort by themselves for a day!)
so that's the trauma and drama in a nutshell. upcoming posts will be much happier...after all, we spent most of the rest of our time here at the happiest place on earth.
sad to be flying home tomorrow...not fun to lose a day of vacation, but we're coming home to christmas, and it doesn't get much better than that.
No comments:
Post a Comment