our journey

so just to get me motivated here, i am going to share our trip to the Northwest with you, although it may come in three parts because that is how the trip was divided.

im going to start out by telling you there was one overall theme to the trip...a huge lesson we learned along the way. that lesson was "Zaine does not travel well." we left home very early to catch our flight out of Atlanta to Seattle and things got off to a rough start because the Atlanta airport is a MESS. a DISASTER, i tell you, in major need of change. checking in at the kiosk is a piece of cake, it's the 2 hour security lines that kill you. im not kidding, the line was so long that they wrapped us in and out of the baggage claim area (as in snake like around each of the 8 circular belts that delivers luggage) and then down the main hall across the way and into another snake like formation that then divided you into 12 lanes that finally sent you thru the beeper! it was a FIASCO to the nth degree and i cannot believe a single person made their flight! Thank the Lord some person saw we had a stroller and sent us up to the second snake line after about 30 minutes cutting at least an hour off of our wait. Unfortunately we were sent to line 12 and they had a trainee on duty (why in the world they were continuing training with that many people in line i will never know.)

After finally making it thru security we had to catch the underground train to our gate and such and by the time we got there Zaine was a mess. She'd already been sitting for two hours between traveling to the airport and security, and she'd had it. Thankfully we only had a FOUR AND A HALF HOUR FLIGHT AHEAD OF US! the only flight we'd been able to get that worked with the dates we had to travel was the one straight across the country with no stops. Needless to say, by the time we boarded the plane and hit the skies, we were "that family". you know, the one with the hysterical child throwing herself in the aisle scratching at mom the first half of the trip. i thought to myself, "Lord, what have we gotten ourselves into! We haven't even gotten there yet!"

At some point she fell asleep and i think i heard a round of applause from the other passengers. We arrived in Seattle safe and sound and made our way to our favorite spot, the play area. Seattle has one of the best airport play areas ive ever seen in an airport or mall. The girls were thrilled (as were we) and we relaxed before our last short flight to my neck of the woods. Around 6pm (9pm Atlanta time) we arrived at my dad's and I think we were all passed out by 6:30! Thankfully, both girls slept thru the night the entire trip, an obvious blessing from God after that nightmarish flight out!!