Merry Christmas!I realize that I have really been slacking off with my blog this last month; the month just really seemed to get away from me. Couple the holidays with being sick and traveling and it is easy to see why I am so behind! I am repenting now though and hopefully I’ll do better in January.
This year we traveled to Saint Louis to be with the kids for Christmas. We were hoping Michael could couple this trip with business so that we could save on Airfare. So, he scheduled his flight the day before mine hoping to conduct a vendor meeting. Shortly after, our company put a stop on all travel so we went ahead and paid for the flight and Michael flew out before me and Aiden.
Aiden and I were scheduled to fly out Friday evening so that he wouldn’t have to miss school and so that I wouldn’t have to take a vacation day. At 1:30pm my offices were closed because the weather was so bad. I jumped in my car and prayed that I would make it in time to catch my flight. Sam was nice enough to drive us to the Airport which took 2 hours to get there. On the way there we heard that the SLC airport was not allowing anyone to land for next 3 hours. I was immediately worried that I wouldn’t get out. Sure enough my flight had been delayed indefinitely. Aiden and I were lucky to get on the 4:56pm flight 2 minutes before the doors closed which had already been delayed for 3 hours. As we were boarding we got a call saying that our connecting flight in Denver had been cancelled!
Luckily Michael’s Sister Jodi lives in Denver and was an absolute doll and picked us up and put us up for the night! It was great to visit with her and her family while we were there. She was over the top accommodating just like Michael! It was really better than being in a hotel. Early in the morning she grabbed Aiden and let me sleep in until 10:00am and she had breakfast waiting for me when I woke up!! We flew out of Denver at 9:30pm and arrived in Saint Louis just after mid-night. Michael picked us up and we started on our 2 hour drive to his parent’s house.
We had a great time with the kids catching up with what was going on in their lives and playing games. It was amazing to see how much they had grown since I was out six months earlier. While we were grateful to spend the time with the kids on Christmas it wasn’t exactly how we would have liked, one of the challenges with coordinating with two ex wives.
The older kids went home to be with their mom on Christmas Eve and didn’t come back until 9:00 pm that night. We had to have the little kids back home on Christmas morning at 11:00 am which means we had to leave his parents house at 9:00am. We had all of 30 minutes Christmas morning to open presents so we missed out on some of the magic but we were grateful for the time we did have.
We had a 3:45pm flight to SLC so we spent some time visiting with Michael’s brother David and his family. Afterwards we grabbed some lunch to kill some time. When we arrived at the Airport we were informed that our flight had been moved up an hour earlier and that we had missed it. They were able to get us on another airline so we would get home that night but we had to fly through Atlanta. Michael said it was a blessing because it meant we could all fly home together – we were originally scheduled on different flights from Denver to SLC. Aiden is potty trained and I didn’t have a pull-up, he fell asleep and at about 11:30pm wet his pants! I didn’t have extra cloths so I had to take his clothes off and wrap him in blanket.
When we landed in SLC there was a blizzard, the roads hadn’t been plowed and there was zero visibility. I also had a bad cold that seemed to be getting worse by the minute. We made it home though! We told Aiden that Santa was flying to our house and that Christmas was the next day. He woke us up the next morning and I asked him if Santa had come. He went running to the living room and came running back to our room screaming that there were PRESENTS!!!! It was great watching him open presents, it gave us the opportunity to enjoy a little of that Christmas magic!
