Last week, J and I took the kids to visit his grandparents in Florida. J has always been close to his grandparents and since they don’t travel anymore, they had never met the kids.
More than anything, I was very nervous about taking the kids on an airplane for the first time. Both of them are so active and I was imagining a series of meltdowns right in the middle of flight. There were a few moments, but overall it went better than I had predicted.
Great grandma EH and great grandpa JH are the type of people that nearly everyone enjoys spending time with and naturally the kids took to them right away. The trip was so short and I wish that we had been able to spend more time there. The kids had fun swimming, playing at the beach, and riding on a boat.
The difficult part came on our last day. First, we found a cockroach in our hotel room and ended up switching to a different hotel. The kids didn’t get much sleep, but we had to get up at 4:30 a.m. for our 6:30 flight. We were supposed to have a layover in Chicago before returning to Detroit, but we were diverted to Indianapolis due to visibility. After we finally got to Chicago, everyone who was heading to Detroit was put on standby for the next flight. Four flights later, we finally made it onto a plane. By the time we got home it was midnight. I think those were the most waking hours I have spent with my children – about 20! Being in the airport so long was tough on them, but they did pretty well. At one point, Brendan was having a tantrum, so an airline employee gave him a “sticker” – a luggage tag for fragile items. All the flight attendants loved it. Despite being fragile, we all made it home in one piece!
Shannon Mackie 