In my last publishing, I told you all that Kreat and I were preparing to embark on a wonderful European adventure, full of history and culture. We were very excited about taking this trip together. However, preparation for such an endeavor is highly stressful; to the point of tears. There were so many details to finalize regarding my schoolwork, the dogs kenneling, Kreat's work and most importantly, time with my family.
As it turned out, a very rare event was to take place the day prior to our departure: my entire family was getting together for the first time in three years. I had not seen my brother Jordan and his wife since shortly after Kreat and I were married, and it had been seven months since the last time I had seen my brother Jared, his wife Susan, and their two beautiful children. So for me, spending as much time as physically possible with my family before we left was priority number one.
We achieved our goal of getting everything settled and had set aside time to spend at my parent's house for about 36 hours before we had to leave. It was wonderful to see everyone. I had forgotten how much fun it was to have my family, my whole family, together.
Then things got interesting: Susan and I decided to run to the grocery store at around 1600, then to get a quick bite to eat (since the two pregnant woman can't go more than about four hours without food). It was a nice day; just the way I wanted to spend it. I was driving us home from getting tacos when we were hit by a car who ran a stop sign.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This is not happening...not today...not the day before I leave on vacation.
The first thing Susan said to me before I called 911 was "Don't tell them we're pregnant! They'll make us go to the hospital." So the police arrived and we spent a little over an hour dealing with them, my dad came to get us because my car is in no way driveable and my vehicle was towed to the body shop where it has been sitting for just under two weeks. Lovely. The irony: Kreat's dad and sister Katie were involved in a car accident the day before; the other driver ran a stop sign. My car was parked next to their car in the body shop parking lot.
It gets better. We got up Wednesday morning, March 6 at the crack of dawn to pack for the trip, dropped the dogs off at the kennel (which broke my heart) and we were off the airport, right on time. We checked in, checked our bags and were seated at the terminal awaiting departure. Now, travelling stresses me out majorly. I don't like delays, I'm paranoid about missing flights and having bags lost. So naturally, I was watching the clock as we sat by the gate, minute by minute. Our plane arrived, de-planed the arriving passengers and I'm thinking "right on schedule," however, we still weren't bording and I was getting nervous. Our flight was to land in Denver at 1200 and we were to be off the ground to Munich at 1400. Then the announcement was made at 1130 "Passengers scheduled to board flight XXXX to Denver, we are having mechanical problems. Please go back to the ticket counter where an agent will rebook you. Thank you." Super. So here we are, in a line of fifty million people who all need rebooking to Denver...bottom line? We never made it to Denver, missed our connection to Munich, the airlines tried to reroute us across the entire planet (not kidding) and we spent 6 hours in our hometown airport at the ticket counter before we said screw it.
We never made it to Germany. We did however, manage to get into Rome a few days early, which was great, but the whole exprience was rediculous. On the bright side, after deciding to scratch Germany, we realized that we would have two more days in Delta with my family. That part was awesome. We threw our bags in the back of the Tahoe, picked the dogs back up from the kennel and went to Delta where we have a wonderful time with my wonderful family. A silver lining to a horrible way to start a vacation.
Our beautiful niece Leslie, who really gets called "Peanie"
Our very handsome and so funny nephew J.R., who really gets called "Buddy"
