solo trip

After a couple of weeks full of sickness, we finally got better just in time for Christmas! I was able to go to Sacramento a few days last week for my youngest sister Mallory's wedding (Raegan's parents came into town to help him with the kiddos). First time away from kids--EVER! First trip alone in over six years.

It was a crazy whirlwind, but great to see family and friends. Spent a good part of Monday traveling to CA and had two full days there before heading home on Christmas Eve. I was supposed to get into DFW around 4:30 PM, but bad weather in Texas pushed it back to 11:45 PM. At least I got home in time for Christmas! I spent over six hours in the Phoenix airport and another two and a half hours on the plane--going back and forth from the gate to the tarmac (while Air Traffic Control kept changing its mind about whether we could take off or not). I have to say that I was SOOOOOO grateful to be alone that day--I felt so bad for all of the kids and their parents on our plane.

US Airways was quite kind to everyone on our flight and I was extremely impressed with how courteous and helpful they were. It was only a couple of hours before they were handing out food vouchers, snack packs, and bottles of water. The gate agent tried her best to keep the mood light and told jokes whenever possible. Besides a few grumpy adults (most of the kids handled the situation better), everyone was polite and cooperative--and enjoyed cheering and clapping loudly whenever we got good news, actually took off from Phoenix, and especially when we finally landed.

I felt bad for the poor flight crew. They ended up walking over to where I was waiting for Raegan to pick me up and I overheard them saying that their original hotel reservations had been cancelled (because they were so late) and the shuttle wouldn't be able to pick them up from the airport for at least an hour or so because of all of the ice on the roads. It was 12:15 AM at this time and they had to be back at the airport in a few hours for 8 AM flights on Christmas morning. If we'd had room in our car and home, I'd have brought them home with me!

Hard to believe Mallory and Brad are now married...I'm sure Mom and Dad are glad that their kids are all taken care of! Got some fun pictures of everyone and will post those later...as well as pictures of what the kids were up to here while I was away. They had so much fun without me, I should probably go out of town more often!