It All Went Well Until The End - PART TWO

 I had no interest in writing another story about not being able to make it home as planned, but that repeated itself - a few blogs down tell our tale of getting home from PA. All was good yesterday morning as we again rose at 3:00 a.m. in San Diego to be on the first flights out of the day. We turned in our rental van and JD and Elijah dropped the bigger boys and me off at United and headed to their own flight at American. Six hours later, I landed in Newark, NJ and got a text from JD that he and Elijah had cleared the Chicago airport and were on their way to LaGuardia in NYC. I was supposed to have a five hour layover, but only an hour into it, it bumped up to over a seven hour wait. I had previously inquired about an earlier flight, but they told me that I would have to pay $75 per ticket. At the point of the delay, I asked again and they told me that there were no seats available due to two other cancelled flights to Richmond. At about two hours before boarding, they cancelled the flight completely. I hustled to the United line to talk about my options. I waited over an hour with only four families in front of me; there were about 100 in line behind me by the time I made it to the front. Having been given the scoop from an adoptive family that they were on their second full day of trying to get out, I knew that just because I was put on a paper flight did not mean the flight would actually leave. Once I got to the front, there were no tickets available to even the three DC airports that day. They offered me a flight out the next day, but it was not even directly to Richmond. JD was able to get his bags pulled from his final leg, skip his flight, rent a car and we drove home together today after spending the night at the Newark Ramada Inn, in the city. It was really a pretty smooth drive, but another day of travel and another expense which we didn't plan. To make matters worse, JD still had to make the trip to Richmond in the opposite direction to get our car back. 

After three trips in less than a month, I have no interest in going anywhere for quite some time! The problem with that is, the auto repair shop called and Red's new engine is in. It's a 12 hour trip to go get it and they are hoping we will come quickly - fat chance! They said two weeks and they are going to wait TWO WEEKS.

Elijah has spent some time at airports N,S,E and W this week. He and JD did Virginia, New York, Chicago, Dallas, L.A. and San Diego airports this trip! He is a really good little traveler.