Me, DH (Seth), 9DD (Amina), 7DS (Rhys), my MIL (Deb), and FIL (Ron).
Thursday, 24 May, 2007 – OKC/Seattle
The morning started off very early and little did we know what a long day lay ahead for us. The alarm went off at 5:30 am. We had been up pretty late the night before packing – it had easily taken over 4 hours to get everything sorted and stuffed into 5 suitcases of various sizes. My throat had been sore for a few days while we were in Las Vegas for a “girls’ weekend” celebrating Aunt Darcie’s 60th birthday. By Tuesday, there was a tickle in my trachea and by Wednesday evening, my cold was in full bloom with a runny/stuffy nose and cough. Ugh, that was only problem #1 this day.
We finish packing and have some breakfast. Suddenly, I hear a multitude of expletives from the bathroom and find out that Seth’s glasses had fallen apart and the teensy screw was missing. The screws in our eyeglass kit were all too big. Problem #2 today. Fortunately, he has an older pair of backup glasses. Never again will I complain about him having more than one pair of eyeglasses.
The kids are up pretty early – they’re very excited about our trip. Soon, Ron and Deb are over. Rene (our recent Au Pair) had spent the night and would be house sitting for us while we’re gone – feeding the animals, watering the plants, picking up the mail and paper, etc. We get the van packed up with our luggage and head out in 2 separate cars at around 7 am for our 10 am flight. Deb isn’t feeling well – she has an upset tummy. Problem #3 today.
The drive to OKC was pretty uneventful except that it’s raining. The rush hour traffic slows us down until we get past Northwest Expressway. We make it to the Sunpark valet and board the van for the airport with all of our luggage. A nice skycap helps us with all of our bags including 8 bags to check-in. We’ve done well with packing and none of our suitcases are over the weight limit. We get through the security line pretty easily except that my Carmex prompted a re-xray of my bag which held us up a little. I never gave it a second thought as security at the same airport the weekend before failed to bother with my Carmex after I forgot to remove it from my purse.
We arrive at our gate only to be directed to another gate – no mention is made on the video screen over the check-in desk. Seth complains again at how disorganized and discourteous American Airlines always seems to be. The kids are entertained by Seth's new phone that plays television.
Our flight leaves late and we are informed by the captain that a large thunderstorm stood in our way and that the plane would take a detour around to West Texas in order to reach Dallas. Our flight would be about double in length which was a real problem as a combination of a doubly long flight and leaving late put us in a bind with catching our connection – only an hour after our scheduled arrival.
As predicted, we finally arrive Dallas at almost 12:30 pm – our connnecting flight was scheduled to leave at 11:50 am. We didn’t make it. We were directed to another gate and was on stand-by for the 1:15 pm flight but there were only 3 open seats for this flight. We declined taking the seats opting instead to keep our group together. We are directed to yet another gate to catch the 2:20 pm flight to Seattle. We start boarding at about 2 pm and soon the captain is informing us of a large thunderstorm to the West that might delay our flight. We push back from the gate and hit the tarmac only to wait for about 4 hours before getting the signal to take off. The line of thunderstoms very obviously passes us by and when clear, dozens of planes take off from DFW. We finally take off from DFW at around 6:30 pm.
The flight to Seattle is almost 4 hours long. Thank goodness the plane is showing “Bridge to Terabithia” on board – the kids have been DYING to see this movie. I enjoyed the movie too and was very sad at the ending.
We finally arrive Seattle at about 7:30 pm and call Tony about our arrival. We head to the baggage claim area and wait for quite sometime. It becomes obvious that our luggage didn’t make the transfer as we did. We file a claim with American for all 8 of our bags and meet up with Tony outside the baggage claim area. We figured dinner was in order (especially since it is now about 8:30, or about 10:30 our local time). The kids are exhausted and hungry and so were we. We have dinner at Red Robin which was very surprsingly packed with people. I have the Whiskey River BBQ burger and split it with Deb which was very good. Turns out that hamburgers catch on as a recurring theme during our cruise too.
After dinner, we head back to the airport hoping that our luggage has arrived on the next flight from Dallas which was to arrive at 9 pm as the baggage claim clerk mentioned. We checked the monitors and find out that this flight was cancelled. We almost left at this time but it looked like another flight had gotten to Seattle just after our flight so we decide to walk over to carousel 2 to look for our luggage.
Thank goodness our bags had arrived. We collect 7 bags but have one still missing – our large red rolling duffel bag with all of our shoes and socks in it. We arrange to have it delivered to Uncle Tony’s house in Puyallup but the baggage claim clerk was not optimistic that we would receive our bag before 11 am the next day. We finally head home in the very large van that Uncle Tony had rented to pick us up in. The kids are fast asleep in the van when we load the bags. The drive to his house in Puyallup takes about an hour and a half. We quickly get the kids in bed and do a little rearranging in our luggage then get ready for bed. We call the American baggage center to find out if anything had been updated on our missing bag but there’s no news yet. We finally get to bed around 11:30 pm or about 1:30 am for us.
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