The Christmas Travel Adventure

OK, so I alluded to the fact that we had quite an adventure getting out of CO and into VA for Christmas. Here's the story...we were supposed to leave several days before Christmas, but the CO blizzard closed the airport and, alas, we were unable to get out. When we called to re-schedule our flight, we were told that the earliest we could get out would be Christmas Eve. Not only that, but we would need to make 2 connections and wouldn't arrive in VA until midnight on Christmas Eve. Since we didn't have any other options, we decided to take it.

Christmas Eve came and, after a nice family breakfast, we headed to the airport (5 hours before our flight, as was recommended in order to make it through the ticket counter and security line in time to board). We got to our gate a few hours early and were able to jump on an earlier flight to get to our first stop, Arkansas. Elijah had fun exploring our laps as well as looking out the window of the plane!

So, we made it to Arkansas in record time and found that it is an EXTREMELY small airport and it only services maybe 4 cities and only had one or two flights to each city per day. All that to say, we wouldn't be able to get out any earlier than our original flight. While hanging out in AK, Eli fell asleep and we decided to do our own version of a Christmas Eve service by reading the Christmas story out of the Bible and treating ourself to chocolate everytime we read "Jesus." Three hours later, the time for our departure arrived and we found out that the plane that's supposed to take us to our next stop, Chicago, was coming from Denver and was delayed (ironically enough, it was our original flight). The flight was delayed enough that we wouldn't be able to make our connection to Chicago and there weren't going to be any other flights out of Chicago that evening going anywhere on the east coast...

We would be spending the night in Chicago and hoped to fly out to VA on Christmas morning. Since the AK to Chicago flight wasn't very full, we were able to take Elijah's carseat on the flight and he slept the whole way. Of course, that meant that once we arrived in our hotel room, he was awake and ready to play. Daddy and Eli bounced around on the bed for awhile to get out some energy and then went to sleep for what was left of the night.

Fortunately, we were able to get out early the next morning and arrived in VA to many excited cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents! We all had a wonderful holiday, but we're not ready to fly again anytime soon. :)