The flight out was great. No big meltdown from Sam. The long weekend was hot, humid and fabulous. We went to a Braves game, went out on Lake Lanier on their boat, went to the Georgia Aquarium, and had a great time playing on their Wii.
Now, here comes the bad part, the flight home.
Before heading off on another adventure into the Georgia sun, I went online and checked the status of our return flight. At that time, everything looked good and the flight was showing "On Time." I knew that we couldn't do the online check-in because they wanted to make sure that our son was really under 2 years old. If he was, we would have had to purchase a seat for him. The airlines definitely want their money.
My dad drove us to the airport 2 hours before our 7pm flight (I'm a stickler for getting there early) and everything still looked good. We got in line at the ticket counter and there were rumors flying around (no pun intended) that the flight was going to be delayed until after midnight.
It took us over an hour to get to the front of the line where we were confronted with the realization that we would have to hang out in the Atlanta airport until after midnight. As of today, I still have not received a decent explanation as to why. There were some rumors flying around that it was (1) because of an emergency landing, (2) the crew never showed up, (3) plane trouble, or (4) it was because of a medical emergency landing. If I have time this week I will try to find out.
So, we were given the option of staying overnight in Atlanta and fly out at 4pm today or hang out in the airport for a replacement plane that would get in at 11:45pm and probably wouldn't take off for Denver until after midnight. Either way, we would be given $14 each for food (not including Sam) and $200 flight voucher good for 1 year.
I was all for staying over in Atlanta, but my husband couldn't do it.
I just knew that we wouldn't be home until after 2am, so I called and left a message for my boss saying that I wouldn't be into the office until noon (at the earliest). I suggested that Brian do the same, but he insisted that he would be okay with such little sleep.
We decided to eat dinner (on Frontier's dime), so we headed to Houlihans and found a small table in their lounge. Because we didn't check anything, we had a ton of stuff surrounding our table. I requested a highchair from our server and she said that there were some upstairs, but didn't make any effort to retrieve on for us. Of course I was pissed.
I headed upstairs to realize that they had a nice big dining room with a ton of room, so I went back to our table and told my husband about the room. He agreed, and I packed up all of our stuff and headed upstairs.
Dinner went smoothly. Everything tasted great and we were very happy for the extra room.
Our next destination was through security. That went very smoothly, too. They didn't even blink about the milk that we had packed for Sam. They didn't even do any tests on it.
Sam was wide awake for the first few hours, but I knew that he was going to be getting tired (aka- cranky) so I put his head on my shoulder and started to lull him to sleep. He fought so hard to stay awake, but eventually nodded off.
Getting on board went very smoothly, too. There wasn't anyone in the aisle seat so the 3 of us had the entire row to ourselves. After takeoff, we laid our son between us and he slept for about an hour. He overflowed his diaper, so I changed him and the outfit in the restroom and he went right back to sleep between us for the rest of the flight (even touchdown- not a peep).
We arrived in Denver after 1:45am. Our carseat that we had gate checked was accidently put through to baggage claim, which was a pain. The shuttle that we had reserved for our ride home wouldn't be available to take us home until between 3-4 am. There was no way that I was going to wait for that.
The cab ride cost $53 (as opposed to the $32 that we would have paid for the shuttle), but getting home earlier was a priority.
We walk in our front door just after 2:30am. Our son was awake on the ride home, so getting him to go back to sleep took a little time, but he eventually crashed just before 3am.
I got our Sam's food ready for the next day and we went to bed, too.
I don't know how my husband is doing after going to work on only 4 hours sleep, but Sam took a 1.5 hour nap (along with the 4 hours that he slept in his crib) before I had to start getting to work, so I feel pretty good.
I don't know how long I'm going to be able to stay awake tonight, but I'm going to do my best to get Sam back on our normal schedule and get his food ready for this week and go to bed.
Will have to remember not to fly with you guys! Too bad they don't have a kids play area to help make the wait easier for stressed-out parents (and kids).
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