Tale of a Trip... part uno

We had a great opportunity to have a family vacation down in Florida in March. Brenda had a show she had to do for her work and decided to take me, Sydney, and Carson along with her. We had quite an enjoyable time, even though we did soooo much in a week- what a whirlwind tour of Florida! I'm going to break the events up in separate days (parts), so forgive, but it's my blog anyway :)

Miracle of the arrival:
As we were traveling to the airport (leaving late as usual, but thinking we still had plenty of time), Brenda had been saying that the plane was supposed to leave at 8:45a, so as we get off the shuttle, we look at our boarding passes and they say 8:25... and we're late, remember? We check in and the lady says that we may not make the flight and since we're so late, the bags may not either. The security line is out the door. I just smile and say- "we're not going to make it on the flight. Don't freak out, just relax cause there is nothing we can do about it." But, we go through security anyway, the flight has gone- the kids are fuming... at least Carson was. So, we talk to the ticketing people to see what we can do. Everything looked like we wouldn't make it to FL until 12:30a- yuck! Plus, even then we'd be lucky to get on a flight as they were almost all full. She said our best bet would be to go to Phoenix- and that plane was ready to go, right now... and guess who had just gone to the bathroom??? Yes, Sydney, my little toilet princess. So Brenda ran to go get her as the boarding people were trying to rush us aboard.

We make it to Phoenix and talk to the ticketing people about our problem... they also told us the only flight out was at about 4:30p, and would be lucky to maybe get on board as it was full. Just then we heard, "Last call for flight blah to Orlando, leaving at gate blah blah". We say, "what about that one, can we go on it?" They quickly look it up and said that there is one seat, and 3 other people haven't shown up yet. They said, "they haven't arrived- just go, we'll do the ticketing later". We didn't even have time to get boarding passes and they rushed us on board- the last 4 seats! I unfortunately had to sit in the middle of a pretty good sized guy, and this woman that was... ok, large boned. (I preface this, letting you know that I love large people- I have a lot of large friends- so I'm not dissing large people... got it?) I'm sorry, but she had the extender strap and was in her seat and half of mine! It was the most uncomfortable flight I've ever had. She was very nice though- she worked at Disney and gave me a few tips. I was thankful when she had to go to the bathroom (window seat) as it allowed me to get up and unfold. But when she sat back down, she forgot to put down the armrest and dang- even more into my seat. There was no use trying to wedge that baby down now- just long suffering, endure to the end, etc!

As we unloaded in Orlando (at just about our planned arrival time of 4:30p or so), we are walking to baggage claim wondering where our bags were, when or if they'd made it. As we walk up to the carrousel, just coming around the corner were our bags- unbelievable! A traveling miracle! I gave a quick thanks to the Lord. The trip had already started out with excitement... and we hadn't even been to any theme parks yet! And as we said many times during the course of our stay... "Adventure's out there!"