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We finally got home last night. This is how our trip home went.

Keith and Mom took us to the airport. We had six, count 'em, SIX check-on bags. This required some creative unloading at the curb, but it was successful. We said our goodbyes and got in line at the check-in counter. We had booked all the tickets separately, so we had to check in again at the gate to get our seats together.

Once that was taken care of, I got some lunch for us to eat while we waited. (Wolfgang Puck Express has really delicious smoked salmon pizza, and their pepperoni pizza is great too. Oh yeah, and fries.)

After that, I took Caleb to play. A few gates down (in the C terminal) they have one of those Little Tikes plastic play structures with a couple slides and a tunnel. We played for ten to fifteen minutes, then returned to preboard on time.

This is when I found out that we had a "new departure time" which I refer to as a 40 minute delay. The plane had not even arrived yet, so this time Bryan took Caleb back to the play area. The plane finally arrived and Caleb was back in time to see the baggage deplane and the work crew doing their jobs down below.

We boarded before most others to have time to strap Caleb's carseat in. He loves sitting by the window and is able to open and close the shade since the carseat boosts him up. Bryan sat in the middle seat and I sat with Micah in the aisle seat. Even after all the passengers had boarded, our flight didn't begin. We waited at least 20 very hot minutes until the take off.

When the snack (pretzels) came around, Caleb had a ginger ale to drink. I was surprised he liked it, but pop is a treat at our house so he probably would have enjoyed anything carbonated. He stayed awake most of the way, falling asleep only after the pilot began the descent.

Micah had been asleep when we boarded, but woke up before takeoff. He was probably too hot. He stayed cranky during much of the flights, but thoroughly enjoyed drinking water out of Bryan's water cup. He would actually cry when we took it from him.

I took him to the bathroom to calm him down. He tried to grab every lever and handle in there, and stood on the handrail to peer at himself in the mirror. As much as he was enjoying himself, we couldn't stay in there long. We returned to our seat shortly before the fasten-your-seatbelts light came back on.

When we landed, we had to wake poor little Caleb up. We collected our stroller and Micah's carseat, piled Caleb's carseat on top, then headed to the baggage claim where we gathered the six check-in bags. We headed out to the booth for our shuttle company. We only had to wait ten minutes or less before we were picked up.

Our shuttle had three other passengers, two of which were dropped off before us in Davis. We were next, but the trip was fairly long and Caleb kept asking if we could go home now. I was with him! We'd left Mom's house over 8 hours earlier.

Finally we got home, the driver unloaded the bags for us, and we were glad for it.


To be continued....