Day 10 - Home Sweet Home

Ahhhhhh it is goooooood to be home.

I honestly don't think I've ever wanted to kiss the ground before after getting off the airplane at the end of a trip. It's not that I didn't have a great time, I really did.... but it's SO nice to be home and be able to get back in a routine. As anyone who's ever traveled with an infant before can attest to - it's HARD to travel with a little one. It's hard to lug diapers everywhere. It's hard to feed kids when they are hot and overtired. It's hard to keep them cool when it's a million degrees outside. And it's just so good to be home. :)

Our day started at 6 am with our Mickey Mouse wake up call. (yes if you ask for a wake up call at Disney you get a recorded message from Mickey himself!)

We packed a bit haphazardly, just trying to get it all in and not have a bag over 50 lbs. We did it! We managed to get it all in! We had our bags picked up and brought downstairs, and we tried to do a check in for the airline right there at the hotel but couldn't because we were flying internationally.

We had breakfast and bought a bunch of snacks to use up our extra meals (it wasn't as easy as we thought - no licensed merchandise, so we bought a lot of chips and rice krispie treats!) We did a bit more last minute shopping in time to board our bus at 8:15. Oakley waved good bye to Mickey and away we went!

We got to the airport around 9 am, and wondered what we'd do with all this time (our flight left at 12:15 pm). Well trust me we used it all up! We got stuck checking in with United as it is pretty darn complex to check in with an infant apparently, even though we now had this wonderful paper ticket we needed. They had a bit of trouble attaching her boarding pass to mine, so it was almost 11 by the time we made it through security. We bought some snacks to feed Oakley and changed her diaper and away we went to our gate. We left on time, with no hiccups at all!

We were on a much smaller plane than last time we did the Denver/Orlando route, so it was almost a 4 hour flight. We were stuck in the very last row which meant no reclining. And the row in front of us could recline, and Jason has this little 10 year old brat sitting in front of him that reclined all the way back. He was a bit stuck. Oakley fell asleep before we left the ground. She slept almost the whole way but it was a very restless sleep. Awake and asleep and crying, and back asleep... ugg.... it was quite painful! Abbey crashed a bit, I watched the in flight movie again (Extraordinary Measures with Harrison Ford and Brendon Fraser).

We made it to Denver in one piece, and had three hours to kill there. We met up with a young guy who was also going Orlando - Regina via Denver, so after we found our gate (the total opposite end of the airport again) we wandered back with our new friend Mark and found some grub... good old McDonald's. We wandered around a bit more and whittled away our three hour wait, pretty uneventfully!

We boarded the plane to Regina at about 5:20 pm local time (felt like 7:20 to us already) and we almost caused a bit of a national security breach on that flight! It was quite a small plane and it was pretty clear it was not going to be a full plane. The guy I was sitting beside made it pretty clear that he was willing to move to an empty seat (as to not be stuck beside a crying kid obviously) so Oakley got her own seat. Apparently I didn't pay any attention when the flight attendant did her 'count' so her count didn't match the gate's count - it looked like they let one extra person on the plane. Hmmm... she made it sound like a huge deal, I sure hope it's not, but how was I supposed to know? I was busy dealing with a fussy overtired toddler!

Anyway, home safe and sound, went through customs with no issues, picked up our van in the long term parking at the airport (it was only around $80 - much less than I thought it would be!). We stopped at the grocery store on the way home for a few essentials, got home, unloaded our van and put our tired baby to bed!

So thus ends the Rattray Family Adventures! Back to our 'normal' life!