Allie asleep at the airport.
Boden asleep at the airport.
Are we still here!?!?Alex and I have been planning on going to Wisconsin for Christmas for some time now. We purchased our tickets several months ago (not early enough, however, since we had the choice of red-eye flights or an extra $150 per ticket--we went with the red-eye). And then it snowed in Seattle.
It wasn't much snow, relatively speaking--nothing like what Utah or Wisconsin get, but snow pretty much cripples Seattle. The few snow plows that the city has just can't keep up, and it's so hilly here that to try to go anywhere is taking your life into your hands. So you pretty much have to have 4-wheel drive to get anywhere. Neither of our cars are 4-wheel drive. We bought them in California, for heaven sake!
So, it snowed and snowed and snowed. Sunday morning, Alex and I were worried. We didn't think we'd even be able to make it to the airport. And even if we got there, we weren't sure if the plane would be able to take off. It was coming down so much that our stake decided each ward would only have sacrament meeting, not the full meeting block. (Turns out that our stake was the only stake in the mission to even have church! Everyone else cancelled.) Having just barely made it down the hill to church, we were in full panic mode. We decided that we'd just take the sacrament and then leave and try to get to the airport before it snowed any more and the roads got any more ice on them. As we were in the church foyer, bundling up the kids, a gentleman that Alex and I have each talked to once asked us what was wrong, and we explained the situation. Without the least hesitation, he offered to let us take his four-wheel-drive to the airport. It was a huge relief to both Alex and I to know that we could at least get to the airport! So we stayed for the rest of Sacrament meeting and then came home and finished packing. Before we left, Alex also gave Allie, Boden, and I blessings. In the blessing, he said that we will have the wisdom to do what was right, and that the children will be patient and obedient.
Even though our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 11:45pm, we left at about 6pm, because the snow was coming down harder than ever, and we were worried that the longer we waited, the worse it would get. So at 6pm we set off, and the roads were as bad as we feared. What is normally a half-hour trip took us an hour and a half to get there. We arrived at the airport at 7:30pm, quickly checked in and went through security, and then made our way to the gate to anxiously wait for our plane.
It was a long wait. Over the loudspeaker, other airlines were announcing that all their flights had been cancelled and to find a hotel or go home. We found out later that Delta, which we were flying, was the only airline at the airport that had working deicing machines. But it was taking over an hour to deice each plane, and then the deicers broke down for a while. I watched a plane take off around 12:30am, and I overheard that the plane had been sitting there, loaded, since 3pm. YIKES!
Through all the waiting, the kids were great. Allie and Boden played for a while, then Allie watched a movie. And then, hard as this is to believe, Allie sat down in her carseat with her Minnie Moo (her blanket) and fell asleep! Just like that! She probably got the most sleep of all of us that night. Boden didn't sleep much. I had hoped he would, but there were too many distractions for him to calm down. I put off nursing him because I wanted to nurse him on the plane so he would sleep there. But finally, around 2:30am, I was losing hope in the flight, and I ended up nursing him so he would go to sleep.
As the night dragged on and on, at one point Alex and I looked at each other and discussed if it was worth it. Would we be able to get there? What were the chances that we might get stuck at our layover city, Cincinatti? We called Delta to see if there were any other possible ways to get to Milwaukee, and she said that we could fly from Cincinatti to Chicago instead of Milwaukee, which would have worked since Alex's parents only live about an hour and a half from Chicago. But there were no cars to be rented in Chicago. At all. Anywhere. His parents could have come to pick us up, but there still wouldn't have been enough seats for everyone once the whole family was together. Still, that option might have worked, if only this initial flight could get us to Cincinatti. But it didn't, and we later found out that the Chicago airport was shut down because of weather also.
Finally, after their deicing machines broke down for the second time that night, Delta finally decided to cancel our flight. I called Delta again, and they said that the earliest they could get us to WI was on Christmas night. We decided that to do this again to the kids was asking too much, and we decided to just get our money back. So we trekked down to baggage claim and waited for two hours to get our luggage back. By 6:30am, we were back in the car, making the hour-and-a-half trek home. And at 8am, sitting in our living room with all our luggage, we ended a 13-hour attempt to go to Wisconsin.
Both Alex and I were worried what the long night up would do to the kids' sleep. Boden slept for six hours that morning into the afternoon. Allie wasn't tired, so we put a movie on for her and then Alex and I slept in two-hour segments, waking up only to start another movie for her. That next night, the kids slept from 6pm to 7:30am the next morning. Yea!
It was a little surreal, unpacking suitcases we had just packed the day before. And we were all sad and disappointed to not be in Wisconsin. Karen and Dan (my in-laws) had such fun things planned for us, and Allie asked several times what was wrong with the plane and when are we going to see Grandpa Smith? But we kept thinking back to the blessing that Alex gave me. In all probability, had we made the flight to Cincinatti, we would have been stranded there, based on what we saw in the news. So all things did work out just as they were supposed to, just as the blessing promised us it would.
We enjoyed having Christmas with just our little family. It is the first time we've had Christmas without any extended family. It was nice to think about our own family traditions and what kinds of experiences we want for our family at Christmas time. And there were wonderful people, like our bishop's family and Beth and Lynette, who invited us over for Christmas Eve, Christmas dinner, and Boxing Day festivities. So, even though we weren't where we wanted to be this Christmas, we felt very loved and taken care of. All in all, a very inspirational and unique Christmas!
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