Our flight was scheduled to leave at 5:45 AM so we were in for an early start to our day! We drove down the day before to stay at my parents so we could be closer to the airport.
Mark and I got up at 3:15 AM and got ready and the car loaded. We got the kids up and they were all so excited! We left my parents at 4:00 and headed to the airport. We thought we were doing okay on time until we got to the airport parking. It took us longer to get the car seats out and everything at the bus stop and then we just barely missed the bus and had to wait for the next one. THEN we also made the mistake of being only the second stop so we had to go through all of the other stops. By the time we got to the check-in count it said it couldn’t process our request for tickets. PANIC!
We headed up to the counter and they told us we were five minutes too late to check our bags. UGGG.
So they bumped us back to the next flight which also meant that we were now on standby. I had never flown standby and with all of us needing tickets (and needing them to be by each other) I was a little nervous. Plus, now we had a whopping three and a half hours to kill!
It all kind of went downhill from there. Even when we got into the security line the system went down so we had to wait for them to start it all back up again!
We finally got on an 8:45 flight and Jacob, Sarah, and I all got to sit together and Mark and Ben sat somewhere else. The kids did SO WELL! We barely even scratched the surface of what I brought for them to do. While in flight, a man two rows in front of us had a heart attack and things got a little crazy. Luckily, there was a lot of help on the plane and I think he will be okay. But we came in pretty heavy on our emergency landing.
We had a layover in Dallas and had another hour and a half to kill before our next standby flight to Baton Rouge. They could only get one of us on the flight and we didn’t want to separate so we got bumped to the next flight! Another hour and a half to wait! During our next flight they informed us that there was a problem with the flaps and so we would be having an emergency landing. The second one in one day!
The kids were absolute SUPER STARS! They did so well and just rolled with everything.
We finally rolled into Baton Rouge at 5:00 {we were supposed to get there at 11:30 that morning!}. Our luggage was no where to be found – nor was anyone else! Benjamin had been amazing all day but he was DONE! He completely lost it while Mark tracked down our luggage. We finally loaded our crazy crew and got into our MINI VAN! I am not a huge mini van person – or at least I wasn’t – until now! Oh my goodness, it was heavenly! It was so nice to have so much space!
We then made the trek down to New Orleans. This took about an hour and 45 minutes. There was A LOT of crying on our way down. Sarah was so done and finally conked out about halfway there. Benjamin cried most of the way and Jacob was just as happy as could be in the back.
We got all of our stuff in the hotel and pretty much immediately went to bed. EVERYONE was in bed by 8! I don’t know the last time I went to bed so early but we were all exhausted.
