Monday - July 26th 12:30 pm.
Me and the kids are pulling into our driveway after visiting dad at school, talking all about what our favorite part of vacation is. Tomorrow at 4:30am we will be getting up and heading to Idaho to visit my family. The kids love to travel and the excitement is building. As I am helping Tanner out of the car, I hear a scream erupt from my backyard. "What are the kids doing now!" As I am getting ready to give a great mom speech about getting along with each other and being kind, I am cut off by the cries of my 2 younger daughters, a back door pane with shattered glass, and Kallie standing wide-eyed hands out and blood pouring down her arm. I drop everything, grab a beach towel off the clothesline,wrap her bleeding wrist, yell at the kids to run to the car. As you can imagine the car ride to the ER was a nightmare. Everyone is talking at once, the girls are crying, "is Kal going to die? what are we doing? what is ER?" I am trying to keep it together and Kal is doing pretty good and telling me that it doesn't hurt that bad. I tell the kids no more talking, mom has to concentrate and drive. I am telling myself, "keep it together Steph, don't crash the car, stop shaking and don't cry." At the ER, Steve meets us, I am trying to sign Kal in and comfort Ry and Emma who are so scared. Steve decides to take the other kids and I stay with Kallie. They tell us that she will need stitches, but she would be fine. Once, my heart rate gets back down to normal I find out that Kal was racing Hayden to the back door and put her hands up to brace herself from hitting the door and the glass shattered. She was so upset about breaking the door, she keep saying she was so sorry. I told her that we did not care about the stupid door, we only cared about her. Three hours later, and with 15 stitches in her left wrist, we left the ER and headed home. Now mom has to finish packing for our trip tomorrow. A little behind schedule ... oh well :)
Tuesday - July 27th 4:00 am Vacation Begins ....
Three hours of sleep is not enough, but I have 2 plane rides today. Maybe I will sleep on the plane. Get in the shower. Finish packing. Wake up 5 sleepy kids and 1 sleepy husband and head to the van. By 5:45 am all 7 McElroy members are in the plane, buckled in an ready for our trip. In a few hours, I will be home and visiting with my family. Yes!!!! NOT!!!!! The adventure was just beginning.
7:30am Arrive in Denver. Find food. Shove food down. Get in line for the next flight that leaves at 8:10am. We would be arriving in Spokane at 9:30am. Steve went to get our seat assignments and I watched the kids. He comes back and says that the flight is overbooked and they are waiting to get our seats arranged so that we can sit together. Oh, how sweet!!!
7:50am (Over the loud speaker) "This flight is full, we are offering $400.00 vouchers and meal vouchers for anyone that would be willing to give up their seat and leave on the next flight leaving at 9:35pm." I laughed and looked at Steve, who, by the way was looking at me like -Wow! That would be a lot of money for future tickets. After giving him the stink eye, I said, " Who in their right mind would hang out at the Denver airport for 12 hours for only $400.00. Crazy!!" Meantime, the plane is boarding, and boarding, and boarding. By now, I am starting to panic. "Go check again." Finally, they tell us that they have enough seats. Great!! We walk down the walkway get on the plane and the stewardess says, "who can sit alone?" Steve takes Tanner and sits in a row. Hayden is taken to some random seat, then Kal. By now, I am getting ready to lose it. I did not pay a lot of money for my family to be scattered around this plane by themselves. Everyone is giving us dirty looks because we are delaying takeoff. It turns out that they only have 4 seats. "Four of you can go, but 3 need to get off or you all need to get off." I told her to call my husband and get him off the plane. So we get pull 5 crying kids off the plane and walk back. In the walkway, we hear this lovely news, "McElroy family... McElroy family, because you did not take the 4 seats that were available to you, we will only give you 3 vouchers." That just about put me over the edge. Good thing Steve was there to calm me down.
8:15am I am looking at the 5 crying faces of my children and hearing them say, "we don't get to go see Grandma and Grandpa with the boat! Why? What is happening? We have to wait how long?" I wanted to throw something or cry or both.
9:30am We had been at customer service getting help. Praise God we had a wonderful women that did everything she could to make this not as painful. We got travel and food vouchers and a flight at 11:30am to Seattle, a 3 hour layover and then a flight to Spokane that arrived at 6:00pm. instead of 11:00pm. Thank you. Not perfect, but manageable. Kal was hurting a little from her stitches and we needed to keep her antibiotics cold, but that we could manage. Better than being stuck in an airport for 13 hours.
6:00pm Arrived, finally in Spokane. It is now 9:00pm our time and we have been traveling for 15 hours. Wow!!! Just a 45 min. drive home to Idaho and the worse is behind us. Well, not quite. Three bags are waiting for us, but we had 4. Hayden and Tanner have no clothes, but they assured us that we would have the bag by the next morning.
Wed. July 28th - No bag. Not yet!
Thursday July 29th - No bag. No phone call. No one calling us back. But Tanner did wake us up throwing up. Lovely, the kid that has no clothes, now will be throwing up all over the only set of clothes he has. And the rain keeps falling. Then the call we had been waiting for. No bag. Start saving your receipts. You will be reimbursed. Great!! I do like shopping, though. And with someone else's money. OK Let's do this ...
Things that I have learned in the last few days ....
* Thankful to God for protecting my Kallie girl. It could of been so much worse.
* Thankful that Kal and I got to talk for 2 hours, just the 2 of us in the ER. She is an amazing girl. So brave, so smart, so funny. I love you sweet girl.
* No one is perfect, especially the airlines.
* God gives us gifts in interesting ways.
* My family is wonderful. I am so happy that I got to come and visit. I look forward to all the special memories that we are going to make in the next 13 days.
* Tanner is a great kid, even when he is sick.
* I love my husband so much. Thank you for fighting for our family and keeping me from losing my mind. You are the best!
* Things can always get worse.
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