The Long Journey Home - Days 8 & 9!!

Oops! There wasn't supposed to be a day 9!! Travel didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped.

But, I'll start back at Day 8. I was up a lot the night before because Niki was up quite a few times in the night. I was also suffering from an upset stomach and was sick in the morning. I ended up taking some Immodium because I really feared that 3 hour Lynx plane trip with no bathroom! Of course, it's some kind of unwritten law that you have to get sick just before you get on one of those planes!!

Anyway, I made one last trip out to the baby house and said my goodbyes to Noah. It was hard, of course, but I just have to pray that I'm back to get him soon. I am so glad that I got the opportunity to see how well he's doing and to get another glimpse at what life is like for our kids. I would highly recommend making the trip out to COTP when you go to pick your kids up so that you can see for yourself.

We left for the airport and then I had a long period of just sitting. It turned out, my plane left over an hour late. When I found this out, I was concerned because I only had two hours between my flights (this was the last flight out of FLL to Chicago). I was still hoping and praying that I could get through customs quickly, though and still make my flight. Well, apparently, the Lynx flight took longer than planned because we didn't get off our plane at Ft. Lauderdale until 8:40 PM - my Spirit Airlines flight was supposed to have taken off at 8:20 PM!! I'm not sure how the flight took so much longer than planned, but there were storms in Ft. Lauderdale, so that might have been the reason. At any rate, I had obviously missed my flight. Turns out, Scott knew that I had missed the flight and had been trying to call Spirit for the past hour, but wasn't getting any answer. He tried to look online see if there was another Spirit flight that I could take, but the next flight wasn't until 24 hours later and it was completely booked! I wouldn't be able to get a seat out on Spirit until Friday night! When I got to the ticket counters at Spirit, it was a madhouse! There were mobs of people and only a few employees at the counters. I got into one line to find out if I could re-book, only to find when I got to the front that I was in the wrong line. I had to get in the back of a different, incredibly long line. After 40 minutes of waiting, I had only moved up a few spots. At that point, Scott decided to just book me a flight on United for the next day. He said he was watching as seats were going away and prices were going up - we couldn't wait for me to get to the front of the Spirit line. By this time, I was more than stressed out. Between having gotten very little sleep the night before, having not eaten anything but bread with peanut butter all day and still having a bit of an upset stomach, I think I was beyond my breaking point.

At that point, I went to my hotel room and got some sleep. I spent most of Day 9 in the airport. I tried to see if I could get a voucher from Spirit for a future flight, but found out (after standing in line for over an hour) that they wouldn't do it. They said that they weren't responsible for the Lynx flight being late, so I couldn't do anything. I could have re-booked, but, of course, I had already booked the American flight and I already knew that I couldn't get a flight out until Friday anyway. So, the money for that ticket was just lost. I won't book with Spirit again. Between the madness at the airport, the fact that no one would answer the phone and the fact that they have so few flights (so, if you miss one, you might have to wait days to catch another), it's just not worth it. Going to the AA ticket counter was like a breath of fresh air after the craziness at Spirit.

Anyway, I got home safe and sound, if a bit weary. I was so excited to see Jaden and Danielle again! Even though Jaden was asleep when I got home, I ended up waking him up so that I could talk to him. Of course, the kids then didn't want to go to bed. They ended up staying up until 10:30!! Jaden was really cute. He said, "Mommy I missed you so much. Even though I had the Mama Chante video, it didn't work. I still missed you!" It was so sweet! It felt so nice to just hang out with my kiddos again. I can't wait until Noah is home with us so that he can be a part of that too!