PA Part 7- Trip Home

Last post of Pennsylvania!

Saturday morning goodbyes. Age stopped in for a few more minutes with her nephew.


I like all of these, so I'm posting them all...




With Pappy. So an explanation about the doll. Meet Joshua. My childhood FAVORITE. I could not sleep with out this baby. My Grandma Berry always tells the story about how her and pap bought me a doll carrier and that "stupid doll" came with it. :) Isn't that how it usually happens? I refrained from taking it to college, but it stayed with me up until then. I wanted to take a picture of Nathan with him because I thought he resembled Josh. Which is funny, because that is one of the names we considered for him.


I called him Joshua or Josh. However, my family (aka Dad & brother, eventually uncles and boy cousins!) liked to aggravate me and call him Bald Floyd. Or simply "Baldy". I didn't think it would be good if my son got those nicknames as well!! :)

Oh my, the things we fall in love with as children!

Watering flowers with Grandma before heading to the airport.


Putting his hand in the water!


At the airport saying bye to Grandma.


I don't really like this part, but we made it through! I suppose hellos are worth the goodbyes.


At Chicago O' Hare airport. We though we were only a few minutes from boarding...


Boy were we wrong! We were wondering why they were not calling us up to board. Then, about the time we should have been departing, an announcement plays overhead..."Flight to Colorado Springs has been canceled. Proceed to customer service across from McDonalds to reschedule your flight." Nice. It never fails with us. Ever since we have been traveling with Nathan, we have issues! We were told the flight crew didn't show up. Although I am certain there was more to it. I doubt the whole crew just decided to play hookey. We later found out that the day before, United's computer system went down and all flights were canceled. My educated guess is that they were still playing catch up from that mess. But I don't really know for sure. So, we high tail it down to customer service with a hungry Nathan in tow (I was holding him off to eat until were on the plane so that he would fall asleep nursing-seemed like a good plan at the time.)

We entered a very long line of angry, emotional passengers. I admit, I was not entirely stable myself. Then, a lovely customer service representative comes out to address all of us. She informs us that all flights to Colorado Springs for that night (Saturday) and Sunday are full, so please be prepared to look into some creative options. Nice. I slip away to give my mom a call to let her know what is going on. I shed a few emotional tears, try to pull it together and rejoin my family in the line. I pop out the Boon Spoon to feed Nathan the last jar of solids that I have and we wait. Nathan was exhausted from hardly sleeping the night before (or on the previous plane ride) so when he is done eating he is upset. However, it turns out he is completely content being held and out of his stroller while in line. He was an angel after that...much more than I would have been if I were that tired!

Meanwhile, Matt is on the phone with United trying to get booked for another flight before the people ahead of us in line. Which he think he accomplishes booking us out at 8:30 Sunday night (so much for being full) when his phone accidentally hangs up! That made us happy. ha. He calls back and after going through the whole being on hold and getting to a representative again discovers that the previous rep had indeed successfully switched our flights. Hallelujah.

We remained in line though in case customer service had an earlier option. We made friends in this line. A nice lady behind us and a man in front of us named Danny. If it weren't for Danny the trip wouldn't have turned out so well. He stepped up to the customer service desk slightly before us and we overheard what flight they were putting him on while our lady seemed confused and was a little bit slow during the whole process. I was trying to be so nice, telling her what a difficult job she must have to be dealing with angry customers and I even let Nathan entertain her for a bit. But when we discovered that the other rep had booked Danny on a flight to Dallas that night that would have an 8:30 flight to the Springs the next morning, we became a bit more demanding. Especially since that flight was boarding as we spoke and our lady was showing no urgency. In fact, the lady behind us ALSO got booked on this flight by the same rep that did it for Danny. Leaving us STILL waiting for our rep to figure out what was going on. She proceeded to give us a spiel about how if we didn't make the Dallas flight we would have to go back to customer service and start all over in this process. She also tried to tell us she couldn't guarantee us getting a hotel in Dallas because she would not be the rep that was personally booking it. Even though we heard the other rep tell Danny and our lady friend that a Dallas hotel would be no problem. I try to politely, but very firmly and with a tone that it is obvious my patience is wearing thin, tell her that we are willing to take that chance if she would just hurry up and book us on that flight so we can get down to the gate!!! She then explains that it will take some time to transfer our tickets! Unbelievable. Just book it all ready, stop with the explanations, please! This, I did not say.

So, I get out of line ready to book it down to the gate with Nathan as Matt finishes up with her. She finally succeeds and we RACE as fast as we can towards our gate. Nathan of course is in his stroller now just taking the world in in a flash. At one point I realize we lost Matt in all of the turns and people movers. I turn around to see Matt waving me on. "Just go ahead, I will catch up!"

It was obvious something had delayed him, I just was not sure what and did not love the idea of continuing on without him, but I complied and kept on running. As we neared the gate I could still see some people gathered around the gate and our dear friend, Danny! Woo-Hoo! We made it on time...if only Matt does as well. I stop running and walk the remaining steps peering back for Matt to come into my view. In a few minutes I see Matt running towards us, Camelbak water bottle banging on his elbow (he has a black and blue spot to prove it). I signal him that we are fine and he can slow down. He looks relieved as he walks towards me, sweat running down his face. Then he proceeds to tell me why he was detained. Apparently, in his haste to get to the gate, he dropped our boarding passes!!! Somebody yelled to him, and thankfully, he heard them and went back to retrieve them. Oh my, that could have been bad.

That was the worst of our trip! We even had a few minutes to spare because I was able to use the restroom before boarding. And everyone on this flight was just wonderful. In fact, they upgraded us to Economy Plus (yay for leg room!) and Danny moved seats so we could have a whole row of 3 to ourselves. A godsend with a lap infant...especially a very tired and hungry one. We had TVs and room and it was great.


In Dallas, the 3 of us (plus Nathan) that had been moved to this flight stuck together. We found the lady to book our hotel while Danny found a kiosk allowing us to print our boarding passes that night instead of getting at the airport super early the next morning. They put us up in a Marriott and a shuttle showed up for us in no time. Thankfully, Nathan was sleeping in his stroller through all of this! Once we arrived at the Marriott people continued to be accommodating. While we received $30 worth of meal vouchers from United, of course the hotel's restaurant was closed at 12:30 am. The lady at the Marriott graciously gave me a banana for Nathan to eat (remember, I'm out of solids!) and Matt a free Snickers bar :) She also had someone bring up a "crib" (it actually was a pack 'n play) for Nathan to sleep in.


See Nathan's "Crib"?


And see a very tired Nathan, ready for bed.


We loved the hotel room, even though we were only there for about 6 hours! Nathan slept at first in the pack 'n play, but then he woke up and he came to bed with us :) In these situations, it's not called spoiling or messing him up...it's called survival!

Everything went SO smoothly getting to the airport, going through security (well, I did accidentally have Nathan's lotion in a big container...so we lost that!), and getting to our gate. We love the Dallas airport. And, remember those $30 vouchers? We spent them all! We found a Dunkin Donuts (my pick!) and Matt bought several $4 Naked drinks to help us achieve our $30. To finish us off, we bought 2 dozen munchkins. We told ourselves we'd share them on the plane. Ooops...yep, we ate ALL of them! ha ha. They even gave me an egg patty for Nathan. So between eggs and the banana from the hotel, he was pretty happy.


Sitting and waiting in Dallas for our flight to the Springs. Matt feeding Nathan. See Danny? He hung out with us the whole time! Nathan really liked him :)


Gluttonous Dunkin Donuts order:


Danny talking to Nathan


We had another great flight. I was really impressed with American Airlines. (Yep, United booked us on American) The flight attendants were all great. In fact, they passed Nathan around between them for a little while. They thought he was so cute. The male attendant reached out his hands for Nathan and Nathan reached for him...who can resist that? Nathan still has not experienced stranger anxiety yet. I'm not sure when that will happen.

Home sweet home and still out :)


Came back on Father's Day!


What a great dad :) Nathan couldn't ask for a better one! Nathan "walking" with daddy.


Sorry for making this my diary! It got kind of long and detailed! Feel free to skim and just view the pictures (NOW I tell you...at the end of the post!) :) One thing is for sure...we made a memory. And I wanted to document it!