we are home

We survived the trip to Maine, barely. Madeline had a blast there, she swam and played to her heart's content. Me.... not so much. We ended up spending the last night in a hotel because we couldn't get a flight out that day. Which was quite a feat considering there was a large concert in Portland that night, we called 6 hotels before finding one that had a room. Course I had to pay big bucks to get it. I should offer a round of applause to the Regency in Portland. They not only allowed me to check in at 10:30 in the am, were extremely helpful in many different ways and took me to the airport the next day.


Thursday arrived. I should of known it was going to be a bad day, it's not like the last few days before that had been great either, but I had high hopes, after all we were going to be on our way home. The girls and I walked around downtown in search of breakfast, and got drenched by a rainstorm. It was insane, it was like the skies just opened up. It was raining so hard that I couldn't even see to walk, no umbrella of course. After it slowed to a drizzle, I had to search out a store to buy new sweaters and jackets at, we were that wet and the girls were crying they were freezing. Lucky for me there was a LL Bean outlet near by! I think that was my only good luck of the entire day. We raced back to the hotel to catch our ride to the airport. We arrived at the airport almost 2.5 hours before our flight, beggars can't be choosers and that is what time the shuttle was for.


An hour before our plan was to depart, I learned that the flight was delayed until 4pm. I waited in line for 1.5 hours with two very unhappy children before learning I would miss all connecting flights to Denver from Cincinnati that evening. And my brood increased from 2 children to 3. I gained responsibility of a 13 year old who was traveling alone from Portland to Denver. The airlines refused to allow her on the flight when it finally arrived because we knew we couldn't make it to Denver that night, and they couldn't/didn't want responsibility of her overnight. She actually turned out to be a huge help, I truly don't know how I would of done it without her. I also had to give up Gabrielle's seat that I had paid for because of overcrowding on the plane. Finally at 5pm we got to leave Portland, we arrived in Cincinnati at 7pm. Waited in line to see if I was going to be able to get my last flight home on Friday, the airlines were still unable to confirm that I could get any further then Denver. Home is another 400 miles and one more flight from Denver. Because I had 3 children, and the last hour of flight delay was due to a crew issue, I received meal and hotel vouchers. Next though came lost luggage.... We finally were able to leave the airport by 9:45pm, the girls didn't get to bed until 10:30pm. I had to wake them up at 6am to head back to the airport.


Friday. Still no word if I could get any farther then Denver. My last flight was to be through United, and Delta (who I was traveling the first two flights with) could not confirm it. They thought there were seats left on one flight, but didn't know for sure. We made it to Denver, said goodbye to the 13 year old, and headed across the airport to United were I finally got a confirmation. We had 2 seats on a flight 4.5 hours later! Once again having to give up Gabrielle's seat so that we could get on the plane, but I didn't care anymore as long as we got home.



We are still all recovering from the trip. And I think it will be a very long time before I even consider another vacation. Although, one good thing came out of this. Ryan swears that next time I want to go somewhere, he will come with!