Sorry for our long hiatus. Not that we have illusions of tons of people anxiously refreshing our blog page daily in hopes of a new post. We are not that prolific of bloggers...yet.
Since our last post we have...logged entirely way too many hours sitting in airports. We went to Salt Lake City and then on to Boston the week after Christmas. It gave Michelle the chance to meet more of Matt's relatives and friends and to see the home where he grew up. It was a wonderful vacation for us...save for the airport mishaps.
We flew from Burbank to Salt Lake City via Los Vegas without any delays or difficulty. We spent a whirlwind two days in the Salt Lake and Provo areas where we crammed in trips to Temple Square, meals out with our in-laws, and an open house reception. Then we were off to Boston. Michelle's mom had come with us out to Utah for the open house and her return flight to LA was at 7 AM. Matt and I dutifully woke up at 4 AM to drive her to the airport through a flurry of freshly falling snow. We then returned to Provo and we scurried to pack our bags to get a ride to the airport with Matt's parents. They had a flight from Salt Lake City to Chicago to visit Matt's sister Jen's family at 11 AM, so we arrived again at the airport at 10 AM. Matt's parents had two bags apiece, but they were going to continue on to Boston in two days so they asked us to check their extra bags so they wouldn't have to pay the extra bag fee twice. Our flight wasn't until 5 PM, but we didn't have any other ideas for how to get to the airport, so we figured we'd just sit and wait. We were able to check our bags at 1 and then we boarded a shuttle to go visit Temple Square, where we had a little time to go to Brigham Young's house and then eat lunch. We took the shuttle back by 4, but as soon as we were through security we discovered that our flight was delayed until 8. We had to sit out another 3 hours in the airport. Eventually 8 PM came...and went. Our flight did not depart at 8, rather it was cancelled and we were rescheduled for a flight the next day at 6 AM.
While we were waiting at the gate for our flight to take off that night, we noticed that there was a long line at the gate. We couldn't figure out why everyone was lined up. We eventually figured it out - they had guessed that there was a high probability of the flight being cancelled and they preemptively lined up to get meal and hotel vouchers. We figured this out too late and we spent and additional hour at the airport holding it down at the end of the line. So word to the wise - if your flight has been postponed and it's nearing takeoff time and no one is being asked to board and snow is falling heavily outside, go ahead and get in line just in case your flight gets cancelled.
We eventually got on our plane the next day and had a smooth flight to Boston. The only hitch - our baggage. We had four bags total between ours and the bags we took for Matt's parents. Only two came off the plane. Guess which bags were still in Salt Lake? Ours.
We then spent two days at the Baird family cabin on Loon Mountain in New Hampshire. It was glorious. Then we returned to Boston where we 1) reunited with our bags, and 2) reunited with friends and family, including a second open house reception.
For our return flight we had a layover in Dallas. A whopping three hour layover. We are now old pros at killing time in the airport, so this is no big deal. We bought lunch, played games on the laptop, and...we lost track of time. Yes, we missed our flight. We were sitting right near the gate too, never heard them call our names or flight. Our flight was supposed to leave at 1:30 PM, next flight? 8 PM. Ugh! Fortunately we asked if we could fly to LAX instead of Burbank. Turns out they have flights to LA every hour. We waited to ride standby at two gates until finally at 5:50 PM we were on our way home. A bus ride and a cab ride later we were home. Thankfully our apartment manager was there to let us in to our apartment because our keys were in Michelle's checked bag, which was in...the Burbank airport.
We are happy that we had a fun vacation, but we are quitting flying for the foreseeable future. We are willing to drive within 10 hours of where we live, but no flying. If you live further than 10 hours away and want to see us, well, we will make room on the couch for you.
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