Our Fabulous Washington DC Trip!!!

We had an absolutely wonderful, fabulous, perfect trip to Washington DC! Aside from a roadblock at the beginning, everything went absolutely according to plan and we couldn't have asked for things to go better! We are forever indebted to Chris & Brittany for the plane tickets AND for tending our kids while we were gone, to my parents for also tending the kids while we were gone, and to Curtis & Lindsay for letting us stay with them and letting us use their car. Transportation would have been MUCH more expensive if we didn't have their car to drive, and as it was we put nearly 1000 miles on their car driving back and forth from their house to the nearest metro station. I can't even imagine how much a hotel would have cost for that long, so it was so nice of them to let us stay at their house -- especially as they're getting ready to move to Arizona AND Lindsay just had a c-section on July 3rd so she was supposed to be resting the whole time! A big, huge THANK YOU to all of you who made this trip possible, and made it so wonderful!!!

It is unbelievable how well things went, and as soon as I got out of the van in Lander yesterday, I walked across my grass, a bee flew into one of the front holes in my crocs, and stung me in the toe. I know I am not allergic to bees because my toe didn't even swell up. I pulled the stinger out and dumped the bee out of my croc. It was a reminder to me of how perfectly the trip had gone and the fact that absolutely ANYTHING could have happened to mess things up, but it didn't! Then this afternoon after I nursed Lizzie, I was holding her on my lap when she suddenly threw up all over me, herself, and the couch -- a ton of throw-up. Clara had a bug before we left and several of the other kids got it while we were gone, but thank Heaven none of us got it while we were in DC or took it to expose Curtis' girls with it! So I know we were very blessed!!!

Day One: The Airport

My dad dropped us off at the Salt Lake airport at 7 o'clock for our 8:46 flight. We went to the curbside check-in with the boarding passes I'd printed the night before. He ran them through the computer, told us our flight had been canceled, and sent us to stand in line at the Delta check-in. He didn't know why the flight had been canceled so while we stood in line I called my mom and asked her to call Chris at work and see if he could figure out what was going on with our flight (since he had bought the tickets and probably still had them on his computer). He called us just as we got to the front of the line.

It turns out our plane had mechanical problems so that is why they canceled it. They had already rebooked us on a flight that left at midnight, had a lay-over, and we wouldn't have gotten into Dulles until 10 a.m. the next day! I didn't like that option, so she said another option was to take a connecting flight that would get us into Ronald Reagen airport. I told her that I had a car waiting for me at Dulles Airport, so that wasn't desirable either. I think she felt very sorry for us at that point (and Lizzie was being sort of fussy) because she then scheduled us on a flight leaving at 10 a.m. with a 3 hour lay-over in Minneapolis, afterwhich we would switch to Northwest Airlines and fly into Dulles, arriving just before 8:30 p.m. And we were riding in first class on the Delta flight. So we hung out at the air port for a couple hours and waited for our new flight.

They seated us in first class, but then a stewardess saw that I was on the side of the aisle with only one seat and said, "I don't know what they were thinking when they gave you that ticket! You can't sit on this side with an infant because there isn't an extra air mask." I couldn't just trade with Cameron because he was on the seat in front of me on the same side of the aisle. So she asked the man across the aisle from me if his young daughter (about 6 years old) could trade with me and be across the aisle from him. He graciously agreed and his daughter was nervous at first, but ended up being fine. As we were getting settled, an angry lady walked through first class telling everybody about how she had bought and paid for 4 first class tickets and the airline gave them away to someone else! The man next to me told me that he and his daughter were in a similar situation to us, and that his wife, brother-in-law, and son were still at the Salt Lake airport waiting for a later flight that had room for them. I am sure that the 4 of us had this lady's first class seats. I don't know why the airline didn't put us in coach. I guess they REALLY felt bad for us.

At first the flight went really well and Lizzie slept for most of it. But then about a half hour before we landed I noticed that she had a LOT of poop leaking out of her diaper and it was all over my shirt, shorts, and seat. I wrapped her blanket the rest of the way around her and just sat there ( there was really nothing else I could do!). The poor man next to me ran for the bathroom and I hope he didn't throw up. It was pretty stinky. After we landed he and his daughter took off at record speed. I sat in my seat waiting for everyone else to get off, then I cleaned the seat and myself up with wet wipes as best I could, and then we headed off the airplane to look for a bathroom. I had packed an extra shirt for me in one of our carry-ons, and I had all of Elizabeth's clothes. So I got her out of her diaper and poopy clothes, bathed her in the airport sink, and then went in the bathroom stall to change my shirt. I didn't pack an extra pair of shorts for me, so I used the soap and bathroom sink water to try and clean my pants up, although it was still pretty obvious that there was poop on me. It was pretty gross! I thought about going in one of the airline shops to buy a new pair of shorts, but I couldn't bring myself to spend a ridiculous amount of money on shorts just to ride in another airplane for a couple more hours, so I decided to just grin and bear it (and hope the passengers next to me would do the same!).

We ate lunch in the Minneapolis airport at the Dairy Queen next to our Northwest terminal. Then Cameron bought us each a blizzard. We had been to the Minneapolis airport before because we flew there with 5 kids in 2000 when we went to Grandma Orson's 90th birthday party in Minnesota. I don't remember flying with 5 young kids -- I must have blocked it out! :)

On our Northwest flight we were separated by about 3 rows and an aisle, but Cameron was used to the airplane by then and was fine. I found it very interesting that despite my great fear of heights, I was not scared on the airplanes at all, even though I sat by the windows on each of the 3 flights. I was more scared of heights in the Air & Space Museum than I was on the airplane! I felt very calm and at ease on all of the flights (except for dealing with Lizzie crying or pooping on me!). I was seated in the seat right behind first class and was next to a woman from Persia. I couldn't understand her very well, but she sure liked Lizzie. Lizzie slept most of the flight.

Curtis was out of town on a business trip and had flown out of the Dulles Airport, so he left his car in the daily parking garage and sent the keys to my mom's house. I called Lindsay to find out where he was parked. I had been very nervous that the airlines would lose our luggage, especially since we switched airlines halfway through, but our luggage was at the baggage claim and all was well. We found our way through the airport and to Curtis' car (we rented a smart cart, otherwise I don't know how we would have made it!). Curtis had printed MapQuest directions to his house and Cameron read them to me while I drove. It was dark and I had my glasses on, but I still couldn't see perfectly so I was glad that Cameron was there to read the directions while I drove. We found Curtis' town of Front Royal without any problems. I didn't know they lived at the top of a mountain, with switchback roads that were very steep and curvy. We were able to find it without problems, although we drove right past their house since it was dark and I couldn't see the house numbers. Lindsay was awake waiting for us.

We got to meet Gwen, but the other girls were already in bed. Gwen has lots of hair, much more than I expected. It was fun to hold her and I teased my mom that I got to hold her before she did! Lindsay had a crib and bed set up for me in the computer room and a bed set up for Cameron in the baby's room. Their house is very nice and Cameron talked about it the rest of the trip - how if he could live in a house like that in Lander he would just "go crazy" because he'd be so happy! I thought it was funny because I've never heard him talk about houses that way before.

I decided that evening that with things going so not-as-I-had-planned, surely the rest of the trip would go so much better, and it did!