Aubrie and I had such a great time visiting my Grandma in Oregon a couple weeks ago. It was great for so many reasons. It was a special time for Aubrie and my grandma to get to know each other since Aubrie was a baby the last time we saw her. Secondly, it was meaingful for me to have a few days with my grandma where we could talk and talk with few interruptions since I didn't have the younger two along. (love you Kaykay and Booboo Bear!) And, it was also great because let's face it - with three kids, it can be very hard to get one-on-one time with each of them and having five days with just Aubrie and me was good for her and me! It will be a trip I hope she always remembers and that she can have special memories of.
I hardly slept the night before we flew out of town because I was feeling anxious and excited. I was hoping we would make all our connections and that we wouldn't get lost. (I have a fear of airports after I got lost in the JFK one in New York when I was 15 and flying home by myself from Italy. I considered it awesome that I didn't break down in tears, although I was close to it.)
So, when my alarm went off at about 3:45 a.m. after an hour or two of sleep, you could say I was tired! Unfortunately, Sam and the kids all had to wake up and take us to the airport because we were feeling cheap and didn't want to pay for parking our car for five days and there were no baby-sitters to be found at that hour. It went all right, though and the airport is only about 15 minutes away.
When I bought our tickets, the only two seats left on the first plane had Aubrie and me sitting far apart from each other. I made a couple of calls to the airline about this and asked if we could sit near each other since I didn't want my almost six year old sitting by herself. They said I should ask when checking in. So, I did ask and was sad to hear the lady say that it was too late to make any changes. She said if we had been there a half hour earlier, she might have been able to. Ahhh! I was stressed. I thought I would try and talk to someone else about it and so we went to our gate and I asked the guy taking tickets if Aubrie and I could sit by each other. He fumbled around on his computer and in the meantime, a couple sitting nearby stood up and said, "We'll switch with them." Wow, I wanted to hug them! They were willing to give up sitting by each other so that Aubrie and I could be together. I thanked them several times and the guy at the desk got everything switched around.
Soon, we were on our way! Aubrie did great during takeoff. She hadn't been on a plance since she was about 15 months old and I thought she'd be more scared but she wasn't.
Our first connection was in Chicago. Long story short -- we ran as fast as we could but did not make our next connection to Denver. I tried not to panic, I really did. But, it was stressful to say the least. Aubrie and I wandered around the Chicago airport for about an hour, trying to find someone to help us. The customer service desks had no one working at them and when I tried to use a computer and service phone to help figure it out, the stupid thing kept hanging up on me over and over! Poor Aubrie -- she was picking up on my stress and kept moaning, "Oh this is terrible!" I tried to reassure her and myself that we would somehow get to Oregon.
Finally, I found someone at a different gate that helped us out. The only problem was that instead of going to Denver and then on to Oregon, we had to hop a flight to Orange County, CA, then go to San Francisco, and then fly to Oregon! That put us about five hours off schedule. We had no choice, though and so I made some calls to Sam and my grandma to let them know of the changes and then we were on a flight to CA.
It was a looooong flight -- about three hours and 43 minutes to be exact. And we had the dreaded three seats in a row so that we were stuck sitting by a stranger. And the stranger was a not so friendly man who was sitting in the aisle seat. And Aubrie, who sometimes goes to the bathroom as a way of dealing with stress, had to get up about four times and make the not so friendly man get up too. It was not fun. And I was so tired.
Anyway, after a very long day, we did make it to Eugene, Oregon. I'll post the rest of my pictures and tell about our time there in my next post.
(By the way, it is not pronounced "Or - gone." If you say it like that, people in Oregon will laugh at you. It is pronounced, "Or -eh -gun." But, if you are determined to say it the wrong way, I won't hold it against you. )
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