Travel Troubles

So far, our trip to California is frozen.  We are not going anywhere, anytime soon, says everyone we talk with at the airport!  AUGH!

We went from arriving to the Des Moines airport at 4:30am, thinking we would get into California in time to have breakfast with the rest of the family, to finding out our flight has a 3 hour delay. 

I feel just like Everett looks in this photo.

Now this was AFTER we already unloaded the van, unpacked the kids, bundled their car seats in plastic and duct tape so they would hopefully survive the trip, and hauled everything into the airport to the ticket counter.  Then we stood in line for a good hour or more, only then to be told we wouldn't get to California until Sunday night/Monday at best because Denver was so backed up.  So we would have to spend a few days in Denver, not good when you are trying to get to California.  

We checked other flight connections and airlines out of Denver, with hopes of having to drive a little but still arriving there today (and we did check all over the west coast!!), and were told there were none... Bummer!

So, Derrick and I looked at each other and went over our options...

1. Stay home, forget the headache and go back to bed.  (Very tempting!!)
2. Go to Denver and keep the Sunday flight, but try a few stand by flights, hoping to get all of us on the same flight. (Which we were told would be a close to 0% chance)
3. Come back on Monday, after the flight issues have cleared, and miss the majority of the family we are looking forward to seeing.

After looking at all these options, we still need to discuss a little further and maybe ask another ticket counter assistant (maybe we will get one a little more flexible, or someone with a creative idea), but right now are are not excited about packing up everything and walking away from a fun vacation with family... so we are just going to chill and pray for the best, while feeding our children granola bars and watching them run around in an over stuffed airport.

6AM and they are not doing too bad!