I promised I'd share a bit about our cross-country journey "home," so without too much narrating I'll try to express what it was like to travel solo, with three children, while pregnant, on a red-eye flight. With a seven hour layover. I will add that nearly every time I fly with the kids it is by myself, and A and W are fairly seasoned air travelers, but this was by far our biggest trip yet. Here we go!
We started off with a three-minute drive to our local airport, and enjoyed a packed lunch while waiting for the security gate to open up for the one flight that day.
An on-time, easy flight over the pretty mountains was barely long enough for a nap for C, and the big kids amused themselves well.
Then began the long wait for our cross-country flight. I must say though, if one must spend seven hours at an airport, SFO is a pretty good one. We started off with an air train ride to our connecting terminal, but took it for an extra lap just to kill time. Got some great views of the airport and surrounding country side. Kids were thrilled.
After that we chewed up some time going through security again (ug) since we switched airlines. That was a pain, but ultimately not a problem. By that time we were hungry enough for an early dinner, and ended up with an amazing wood-fired pizza and indulged in a whole lot of over-priced fancy organic snack food. Best pizza we've had on the west coast, and it was a fun dinner.
After that we found our gate, and happily discovered that it was right next to the "kid zone" play area, which we were pleased to have to ourselves, and was good for another half hour of entertainment. Especially from these little mechanical butterflies...
C ate a macaroon that cost approximately 50 cents per bite. I are the other one.
When that got old we back-tracked to the bookstore and spent a quiet 45 minutes absorbed in the kids' section with Pokemon books and stuffed puppies. Another total win. I won't tell you how much we spent there.
After that it was time for jammies and Pokemon on the iPad, courtesy of airport wifi. C watched the planes as the sun set.
By that time we still had nearly two hours until boarding, so it was back to the play area for one last romp, then we washed hands (and feet -ew) and started feeling a bit tired.
Except for A of course.
Finally, time to board, get cozy, eat one last round of late-night goldfish, and after an on-time departure everybody (except me) fell right asleep. Our airtime was barely five hours, but let me tell you, that's a long time to sit awake, in the dark, holding a toddler, watching others sleep. Oy. But we made it, and everyone was surprisingly bright-eyed in the morning.
The last stretch included disembarking, changing clothes, walking a sadistic distance peppered with elevators to get to baggage claim where my daddy was waiting! Hooray! We fought terrible traffic all the way home but happily arrived in decent shape in the middle of the morning. And it's been lovely ever since.
I don't really want to do that ever again, but at the time I can honestly say the kids were wonderful and we had a tremendously fun and memorable time on our big trip. Now we are delighting in pure R&R at my folks' house, and I don't want to think about airplanes again until I absolutely have to, and thankfully that is still a few weeks away.
So there you go! Now onward with summer. C has a terrible iPhone obsession these days so it is getting hard to have it in my pocket for quick pictures. Nevertheless, I'll try to keep up the blog. Enjoy your summers, one and all!
