Into the Abyss....

(No pictures on this one...they would be too depressing,even if we had taken any.)

We woke up and drove to the house to do the last minute packing cleaning routine, counting on the truck being there at 10 am like the guy had called and told us the night before. Just before 10, Brigg decided to take the boys to the Botanical Garden one last time since he was still very much one armed. 10 am came and went....no truck. Finally at 10:30, he called. Noon was our new time. No big deal. Noon came and went, and went and went. Finally, just after 3 pm, he showed up. He had 2 guys to help him load. We weren’t taking that much stuff. I figured it would take them an hour, tops, to get it all loaded. 3 1/2 hours later, they finally closed the doors on the truck. I don’t know what they were packing all that time, but they were packing something. Brigg and the boys were about to completely lose it...you can’t pack or clean much one armed, but you also can’t wrestle 2 boys one armed very well. We were all exhausted and at the end of our ropes, and we still hadn’t had dinner.....which ended up being a compilation of snacks for the boys so we could shortcut them to bedtime, and sandwiches for Brigg and I after. But we were still feeling relatively hopeful. The next morning, we were driving out to Chicago where we had a fun couple of days planned.

The drive to Chicago went surprisingly well. The dog was going a little nuts, but the rest of us did okay. We found our hotel and played for a little while. That night, we had reservations at a Chicago restaurant that I have wanted to eat at for years. I had made the reservations 6 weeks in advance. I was really looking forward to it, so we left an hour early to get some where that was supposed to take 15 minutes to reach. One hour later, we were about 1.5 miles from our hotel and nowhere near the restaurant. Yes, we had to cancel, turn around and head back to the hotel. We stopped to eat and had to leave with our food to go because the boys were both screaming and throwing things. The worse they got, the more the lady at the next table told us how cute they were. It really ticked Brigg off.

The next morning, we had planned to go the aquarium as something fun for all of us. It was a great idea, but not a great experience. At all. We had been to the aquarium before and really liked it, but not this day. There were so many field trips there, Stratton kept getting smacked into the glass by the older kids. Dash couldn’t get out the stroller because he kept getting knocked over. It was totally miserable. So we left. We tried to go to another restaurant we had wanted to try to get take out for lunch, but the week before, they had stopped taking take out orders for lunch. So, we gave up and went back to the hotel where we tried to pretend like the boys would take naps. My parents were flying in that evening to graciously diver our car up to Alaska for us, so I left to pick them up. Once again, I was in traffic for a total of 4 hours coming and going. And I wasn’t going that far. Brigg and the boys were once again about to go over the edge by the time we got back and we skipped dinner because we couldn’t face leaving another restaurant.

My parents left first thing Saturday morning. A few hours later, we took the airport shuttle to the Midway airport with all our bags, car seats, boys and dog in her crate. We wanted to make sure we gave ourselves plenty of time to get the dog checked in and through her paperwork. A great idea, but the check in counter didn’t open for an hour and a half. So we sat and waited. They finally opened and as we were starting Piper’s paperwork, they announced the plane would be at least 3 hours late. No big deal, except it meant we would miss our connection to Fairbanks. I pointed this out to the ticket agent helping us and she told us that if we missed that connecting flight, there wouldn’t be another flight until Monday.....that’s right. In 2 days. I cried. I am not a public crier. I’m not even much of a private crier. But I couldn’t help myself. I cried and cried and cried. Not for sympathy or anything else. Because things were just that bad. It had been quite literally the worst 5 days of my life, to include labor. I would have been embarrassed, but really I was too tired to care. I think it freaked the ticket agent out a little bit. She disappeared to the back for about 45 minutes. Finally, she came back and had booked us on a flight out leaving in a couple hours from O’Hare airport. So, we loaded all our bags, boys and dog into a stuffed to the rafters taxi and drove all the way across town to the OTHER airport. Piper had already been in her crate for about 6 hours at this point, and we hadn’t even gotten on a plane. The woman who helped us at O’Hare was fantastic and we got to let Piper out and giver her some food and water and she was soo helpful. Thank heavens.

The flight was a straight shot from Chicago to Anchorage. It takes just shy of 7 hours. And Dashell had decided that enough was enough. He screamed for hours. Neither boy finally gave in and slept until about a half hour before we landed. And we still had one more flight to Fairbanks. That flight went much smoother. Both boys crashed. We watched Piper get loaded on the plane through the window, and she looked like she was about to have a stroke she was so nervous. ironically, after all the hoopla, we only got into Fairbanks 45 minutes later than we had originally been scheduled to...it just felt closer to 48 hours. And we learned a couple of valuable thing. First, Piper was a nervous wreck and wouldn’t let us out of her sight for the next 2 weeks. I don’t think we will be flying with her again. And secondly, we decided that we hate Chicago. You can tell me all you want about what a great city it is, but we decided that even if it great, it’s ruined by there being so many people in their cars. All of the time. Good thing we moved to Alaska....we shouldn’t be having that problem too much in the future. When we finally made it to my parents house at 2 am, we crashed. We didn’t do anything for days....literally. I don’t even think we left the house. We were just so glad for it to be over. We were really still just beginning, but at least the worst was over.