Life

We were supposed to leave Columbus at 7:00 a.m. the Saturday before last to head to Florida. That's an early wakeup call, especially for two little ones. I knew we were in trouble when I saw the fog, think as pea soup and worse then I had seen it in a while. My Durango has fog lights but I've probably only turned them on 3 or 4 times but they were on that morning.

Security is a pain with two kids, car seats and a stroller. Plus the carryon bags we had. Henry wondering why he had to take off his shoes, me having to take the DVD players out of its case, etc. It was pretty apparent that no planes were taking off or landing once we got to our gate. The waiting game began. Once I knew we were going to miss our connecting flight out of Baltimore to Tampa, I started calling Southwest. I eventually got us on a 2:45 out of Columbus to Orlando and jumped on it, even though Sarah's upgrade cost $75. Henry and I were flying on frequent flyer tickets. Our flight to Baltimore ended up leaving at 10:30 or so but SW was telling me that we would have to fly standby there to get to Florida. With Spring break, I didn't want to chance it.

As luck would have it though, the 10:30 direct flight to Tampa was delayed too so I got on the standby flight for it. Then we waited. We ate at Chili's. I had a beer although I had wanted to wait until Florida. At that point, we had been at the airport six hours.

The flight left at 2:00 and the Briggs family was on it. Someone had to give up an aisle or window seat so that Henry and Sarah (holding Jack) could sit together. When we landed in Tampa, I canceled our car in Orlando that I had ordered and called Payless in Tampa and told them we had arrived late. They told me they had canceled our car. I was furious but couldn't do anything, I hadn't put down a credit card or anything. I guess that's why you Payless. So we lugged our stuff to rental car row, I picked Avis and they rented me a 3 row SUV for the same price as the minivan was going to cost, plus it was onsite and we didn't have to take a shuttle. Deal.

We arrived in Englewood at 6:30. Not too bad considering our previous ETA was 2:00. But they day was shot, we were exhausted and it was pizza for dinner. The Briggs family slept soundly on Saturday night.