Daily Dose of Voodoo

We knew we were crazy when we booked or flights. In order to fly out of C-ville and use a credit Zach had on Us Air we had to settle for an outgoing trip with layovers in Charlotte AND Phoenix. We knew we were crazy when we woke up a four year old and a sixteen month old at 4am to fly to the west coast. But what we didn’t consider was the complete idiocy and insensitivity of an airline that cancels flights for no reason once we were already in Charlotte, leaving us with only terrible options for getting to Portland, including staying in the Charlotte airport for 9 hours, separating our family into Me+Melina+Diane with Zach on separate flights, and waiting until 8pm for our flight to Portland. So we chose the lesser of all evils and added a FOURTH leg to our trip, taking us from Charlotte to Dallas to Phoenix to Portland. It was rough and it was tense but we did manage to get bumped onto first class for one leg of the trip, which was fun. (Melina asked “why can’t we always fly in seats like these?”) 

Anyway, we made it with only one near-meltdown when Melina fell asleep (in first class of course) and was woken up by an announcement from the pilot. If you know her you know this usually spells disaster. I was ready to give her her first spanking in the first class bathroom but Zach stepped in and calmly averted disaster. Whew. So in general the girls were amazing, and we not only made it through the flights but also took a train to our hotel, checked in, went out to a nice dinner at Mother’s, got them in bed at 7pm PST (10pm our time) with hardly more than a whine. Oh and before you think I’m patting myself on the back too much this all took many bribes of animal crackers, fruit, and cookies. But it’s done. And now we sit in our uncharacteristically amazing hotel room watching the line at Voodoo Doughnuts wrap around the block and plotting how many times we can sample their goods in a two night trip. Zach figures a doughnuts a day is fair.