bags & delays

So I'm sitting down right where I was three weeks ago and writing another blog post. Thanks to those of you who faithfully checked the blog while we were in the U.S. I had excellent intentions of writing, but it seems that when you develop a pattern of playing games until all hours of the night and your daughter develops a pattern of waking up at exactly 7:20 every single morning and there are packed days in between - there isn't a lot of time and energy left over for the blog. We got to see many of you, and catch up that way, which was even better!

I will go back and post about our three weeks at home sometime this week. For now, I'll post about today... which was somewhat of an event in itself. I realized that checking the amount of luggage that we did and sleeping through take-off are two tell-tale signs that we've flown enough for it to become habit. There's a lot of freedom with carry-on bags, I'm learning. As usual, I had four 50-lb. bags to check after an absolutely frigid walk from the airport shuttle to the United check-in counter. And as usual, we had to move a few things around to get everything to fit. But as usual, everything did - and we even got a third bag free because of Ivory! So that was a score - paying only $40 to check all four of them. We ended up gate-checking two more of our carry-ons, which left us with only the backpack, the diaper bag, and my totebag to carry around for the day. When I mentioned to Grant that we had successfully checked 6 bags for a grand total of only $40, he kind of gave me this look that said, "Don't even think about packing more next time". So the day started out well... but about the sleeping part.

We had gone to bed in decent time at our hotel in Chicago last night, but didn't sleep well. Ivory had a cough, and I was paranoid that we were going to oversleep and miss our shuttle, which has happened before, so between those two things we were waking up about every half an hour for the entire 5 hours of sleep we got. We arrived at the airport to discover that our 6:30 flight had been pushed back to 7... and then to 8:30... and then to 9... we finally left at 9:30, which of course caused us to miss our connecting flight in Houston. But Grant took care of that while we were waiting in Chicago, so it wasn't a big deal. When we weren't trying to get our tickets figured out, we were taking turns sleeping - I got a good 20-minute nap on the airport floor and another one during take-off, like I mentioned earlier. Like I said, we were really tired. Our flight to Houston was smooth... we got lunch and let Ivory crawl around on the floor and then left for Guadalajara at 2:25.

Arrival in Guadalajara was good - I know people must have been praying because Ivory did not cry during either of the landings - or really much at all - and we had the nice seats at the front of Economy class on both flights - which means extra leg room and space for Ivory. It was wonderful

Unfortunately, two of our bags didn't make it, but I did forgive United since, after all, I had a lot of them. They will be arriving by bus to Zamora sometime this weekend. As soon as we got in the van to drive back to Ixtlan, Ivory threw up more than I could even imagine fitting inside her... she must not have really felt good all day, and her food must never have had a chance to settle. But she's doing good now - sleeping in her own bed. I think she likes being home.

It is good to be home. More later.