The Years Last Travel Day

I would be willing to admit that anyone who dares travel across the country with a 4 year old and a 2 year old in one day could be deemed legally insane. If you tend to agree with that statement then you would have to look at my wife and I and label us ready for the loony bin.

We spent the last week in Virginia spending time with my wife's family. We had a great week and left yesterday morning around 6:30am mountain time and were scheduled to arrive in Albuquerque around 6:30pm. 12 hour travel day... whew. We knew it was going to be tough, but little did we know what was in store for us.

Here was our itinerary. Leave Norfolk - 30 minute flight to Baltimore. 3 hour lay over in Baltimore. Flight to St. Louis. Stay on the plane, but refuel and then fly to ABQ from St. Louis. (total of about 5 1/2 hours on this flight)

All I can say is this: A four year old and a two year old in confined spaces for hours at a time is recipe for disaster. The problem is that you can't really do any effective discipline (namely spanking) on a plane. On our first flight there was a young college girl who saw us coming and had no shame, she just said, "I think I'm going to find another seat" loud enough for us to hear it. On the way out we had a lady give us the evil glare (I thought my wife was going to punch her in the face...don't worry, she didn't).

My son Taylor, as most people who know him know, has an abundance of energy. Strapping that poor child into and airplane seat for hours at a time gives rise to the following results: random spastic flailing of all four limbs at the same time, wild animal sounds and gibberish proceeding from his little trap, peeing of his pants (he did, twice, couldn't get up due to the flight and couldn't hold it), frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog (not really), slamming his feet into the seat in front of him and throwing his body back into his own seat prompting the people in front and behind him to think he is the spawn of Satan, and watching DVD's on Dad's computer until the battery dies out (it did and that was a problem).

Have you ever tried to take a four year old to go potty in a airline bathroom? Not pretty. Picture the airplane bathroom scene from Tommy Boy. Trying to get Taylor and I to both relieve ourselves in that phone booth they call a bathroom without either one of us ending up with an arm in the latrine is a sight to behold. We did it two or three times.

Autumn is just newly two years old as of Dec 30th, thus she hates all form of physical containment. She was a lap child and thus flew for free... bad choice. She was absolutely all over the place so mean old Daddy had to become a human straight jacket for her on multiple occasions. She was not a fan of me during those times.

So we were getting to the end of our frazzled journey and we could see the lights of ABQ from the airplane window. I was reaching for the razorblades at this point and Kim was not faring much better. You know that feeling where you can taste the end of your journey, the finish line is in sight, and it can't come quick enough? We were experiencing that universal human feeling but it was soon to be snatched from our grasp. The pilot got on the mic and said that the weather was deteriorating rapidly in ABQ (a couple days prior, we had received the biggest snow storm ever on record in ABQ).

"Please Mr. Pilot sir, tell us it's not so!!!!" I said to myself. He said even though we were circling our destination, we were going to have to reroute to El Paso.

NOOOOOOOOO!!!! Our journey was just beginning now.

First problem: Since it was holiday travel, the flight schedules were limited and the flights the following day were all booked. Second problem: Southwest airlines was not responsible since it was an "Act of God" that caused the problem. Thus we were on our own for how to get back to ABQ or we could wait until Tuesday to get the next flight back to ABQ.

We had to fly one more hour to El Paso and then figure out what we were to do. We survived the rest of the flight ok and when we got to the El Paso airport it was madness. All flights that were supposed to go to ABQ were rerouted to El Paso and everyone needed to figure out what to do. It was a mad scramble for rental cars and hotel rooms. Luckily we got both of those and within an hour or so were on our way to our hotel. At this point Autumn was asleep in her stroller, so that was good.

We were all looking forward to going to bed and we made it there in a no time. I got to bunk with our two year old and Kim took our four year old. I forgot how crazy it was to sleep with our kids. Both of them want to be touching you at all times when sleeping but still manage to flail around quite a bit while sleeping. Not fun for the parental units. Sleep was tough to come by last night, but we made it. Early this morning we were on our way in our rental car and made it safely back to ABQ in four hours or so.

It was a very interesting way to spend New Years Eve, but we are still madly in love with our crazy kids and thankful that God has given us another year to enjoy Him and each other.

Epilogue to our journey:

I talked to Jimmy (the guy who was house sitting for us) a number of times on the phone during our time away. When I called him after the huge snow fall he told me that he shoveled our driveway for us. Here are the results:


What he failed to tell me was that he and his friend John decided to pile all the snow that they shoveled on my 89' Honda Accord that was parked on the street. Here are the results:



Thanks guys! What a great thing to come home to after our time away. I actually thought it was pretty funny.