Getting Home

Well we finally made it to Colorado after a very long and trying experience of traveling. To start from the beginning, we were going to use some buddy passes we had to travel home. Little did we know that this wasn't the smartest idea. The night before our 6:30am Friday flight we called the airline to check on our flight. They informed us that the flight was over booked by 21 seats and there was no possibility of us getting on the flight or any other flight that day. With out buying new tickets we were not going to make it. After a very stressful few hours of several phone calls with family and the airline we were able to get a flight for Friday night. Too bad that the first big snow storm of the season was hitting Connecticut on Friday at noon. Anyway, we headed to the airport the next day around noon for our 5:30pm flight. We thought we'd be early just in case we could make a earlier flight, but that didn't work out. After sitting at the airport for five hours with the weather getting worse and worse our flight was cancelled. Sam was determined to get to Grand Junction by Saturday. He had been asked to referee in a major wrestling tournament in Grand Junction and it was a major deal to him to be there. The airline transferred our tickets over to another flight heading to Baltimore (our connection to Denver)that night, but the plane wasn't leaving anytime soon due to the snow. We continued to entertain Aubrey in the airport till they let us board the plane around 7pm. We sat on the plane while they deiced the wings, removing around 7 inches of snow. We taxied to the runway and they deiced the plane again before we took off for Baltimore. Sam and I were certain we had missed our connection to Denver, but upon arriving in Baltimore we realized we could still make it. It turned out our flight had a plane but no captain to fly it. Again we waited, letting Aubrey run around in the airport before boarding. We sat on the plane for awhile waiting for the captain to arrive and finally took off from Baltimore around 1am eastern standard time. Needless to say we were all really tired and Aubrey slept the entire 4 hour flight to Denver. Sam and I weren't so lucky, but we were able to snooze a little. We reached Denver at 3am mountain time and went to get our luggage. Surprise, surprise...after searching and searching we figured out that our luggage was lost! Our two suitcases plus Aubrey's car seat was lost somewhere and Sam was getting pretty upset. He was suppose to be in GJ by 8am to ref. After submitting a lost luggage report we waited for a taxi to take us to Children's Hospital to meet Sam's sister Sally. We took her truck to her family's house to take their little car to GJ. We ended up leaving Denver and headed to GJ at 6am. Luckily the drive across the mountains wasn't too bad. We did meet some pretty bad snow and roads over the passes, but we road into GJ at 10am. Sam dropped me off at Chad and Mindy's where we were staying and took off for the gym to ref wrestling.
Of course Sam and I were complete zombies by the end of the trip going off of hardly any sleep, but we were so thankful to get to Colorado safely and to be able to see our family. Over all of this Aubrey was a wonderful little girl. We were a little worried since she'd never flown before, but we couldn't of asked for her to be any better. She was happy the entire way and slept on the plane and most of the way driving. Oh...Sam did make it to the wrestling tournament a little late and somehow he was able to ref until late Saturday night and we did get our luggage back the next day. Overall it was the worst flying experience we had ever had, but it was worth it to get to come and see our family.