Flying with us...

or heck, traveling with us, is probably not in your best interests I believe.

6 months ago, we set out on our Adoption Journey to China. Only to hit a few "snafus" with flights. 45 hours later, almost no sleep, we were finally in Beijing. 45 hours, which covered 7 scheduled flights we were supposed to have been on, only 4 of which we actually managed to make it on the flight. It was crazy. It was stressful. We endured, and learned quite a bit ourselves and traveling. Mainly, we would NOT make good Amazing Race contestants.

Our DC vacation, well, what would be an airplane ride without incident in actually getting to take that flight?

On the outbound trip, we got hit with new baggage rules. We could only take 1 checked bag and 1 carry on item. Each. Extra bags, we were told were $10. The day of, the fee had increased to $20. Overweight fee was $29. We checked 5 bags, one was 2.5 pounds over, the other 4 were WELL under the weight. Atlanta charged us $49. *grumble grumble*

On the return flight, our flight was scheduled for 2:53pm. We were told to check in 120 minutes prior to departure, absolutely NO check in 45 min prior to departure. We left our hotel around 9:45am (give or take a few minutes). GPS unit said 1 hour and roughly 30 minutes of travel time. GREAT! We could actually get the rental car turned in without extra fees. We chose against seeing more museums for fear of brains exploding from too much knowledge. ;) We started down I95, all was well for about 5 minutes then we noticed lots of red brake lights. LOTS of them. 3 lanes full of them as far as we could see. We thought, okay, traffic snafu. We got in the HOV lanes, all was well for about 5 minutes (if that). 1 mile prior to "re-entry" to normal interstate, it was a standstill. Complete and total standstill. 5 lanes going into 3 that were already backed up. We managed to merge. (Notice, I would give us having gone roughly 10-15 miles TOTAL at this point) It was now around 10:45am. 1 hour. 1 hour to go a lousy 10-15 miles.

We tried "detour" feature on the GPS. We were cruising along at a pretty good trip, for about 10 minutes, and finally thinking..."we just might get there in plenty of time to eat lunch!" Yeah, until the we hit the thousands of other people who had the same idea as us to use "detour" feature on their GPS units. Brilliant.

We pulled out the laptop, hooked up my cell phone, and searched. "Incident at mile marker 131." Okay. Nice to know, where did that leave us? We had no idea where we were in relation to that. It did mention, "traffic congestion due to incident at mile 131" though. Where was this "congestion?" Mile marker 156. Yes. 25 miles. Our hearts sunk. We tried to detour around the US highway congestion, but learned, the GPS unit doesn't really detour from the detour. It would only send us back to the congested interstate that resembled a parking lot, or send us to the US highway that was the parking lot we were on. We watched the "arrival time" creep up. We decided that surely the interstate was moving faster, got on, around 140 I think. 9 miles. 9 miles took roughly 1 hour. We called the AirTran to see what our options were. We were now in danger of not arriving outside the 45 minute window, and we had to drop off a rental car and check in!

We tossed some snacks back to the boys. Samuel got a little choked (he swallowed a pretzel piece whole), and yes....he vomited. Luckily into a bag. I leaped into the back to help him out. Climbed back up front. Then realized just how badly I needed to stop for a restroom. See, it had been almost 3 hours by this point since we left. We'd gone maybe 30 miles. The van needed gas unless we wanted to pay the $5.80+ a gallon for the rental car to fill it up. We were short on time. The decision was, "Bathroom break worth possibly missing the flight?" I finally said, YES!!!! It took us 5 minutes to refuel and use the necessary. ;) Dh drove great, the kids were troopers, Katie thought we were never going to feed her again! We made it to Richmond Airport 1 hours and 10 minutes prior to departure. Dh dropped me, the kids, and the luggage off to check in. He returned the van. I had us more "evenly packed" and we only had 4 bags, this time all weighing CLOSER to the weight limit.

We made our flight, a little stressed, but going home.

We got to Atlanta, finally got to the van....it wouldn't start. The battery was dead due to 3 interior lights being left on. Thanks kids. AAA to the rescue, and one lost code for the entertainment system in the van meaning NOTHING TO LISTEN TO ON THE WAY HOME! We made it...finally. The bed never felt so good.