This was one of our best trips yet. And the worst. We loved escaping to the sunny island of Oahu. The weather was not great for most of our stay, but it didn't slow us down much. The sun came out enough and the rain bursts only lasted a few minutes so we were just fine. We packed in all we could for our four full days of fun and then an unexpected twist of events happened.
Just as we had packed up and left our condo, I got notified our flight back to Seattle with a stop in Portland was cancelled and rescheduled for two days later. I was shocked! Apparently Portland got two feet of snow and any flight going in or out of Portland was canceled. Long story short, after lots of waiting on hold, scouring the internet, and calling my friend/travel agent, there weren't any flights for two days so we were stuck in Hawaii with nowhere to stay. Both a blessing and a curse. Randy had to reschedule a full day of patients into his already booked schedule and then we had to find a last-minute hotel room for a family of six. We searched every hotel and AirBnB on the island and there were only a few options and all cost a small fortune. So that's how we wound up spending two luxurious nights at the ritzy Turtle Bay Resort. It was faaaaaancy! We are hoping the airlines will compensate us even a little bit for this huge inconvenience. The last two days of our trip were not only the most expensive but also the most fun.....until the worst thing ever happened.
Our connecting flight from L.A. to Seattle was canceled. This time I wasn't given an alternate flight option and was told to call a special number that got me directly to an agent. I told her our predicament and literally spent an hour on the phone with her trying to find a flight to Seattle. There was nothing for two more days! I was NOT about to spend two days in L.A. waiting for our next flight. The agent tried to split up our family to find other flight options and that didn't work either. Then we tried for anything that would get us closer to Seattle like San Francisco, Portland, Boise, Sacramento, Vancouver B.C., anywhere! There was nothing! The agent said if we were willing to wait 12 hours in L.A., she could get us on a flight to Alaska and then from Alaska to Portland, and then we could drive the three hours home. I wanted to punch her in the face. We opted to drive the 18-hour drive from L.A. to Seattle. It was nuts. Randy and I were both exhausted from a red-eye flight and then bad luck struck again when Ethan came down with the stomach flu. We had to stop frequently for the first several hours of the drive so he could run to the bathroom. Poor guy! and poor us! Things were coming out from both ends and we knew it would just be a matter of time before everyone else got sick too. And eventually we all got sick the following weekend. Everyone except Henry. It was awful!
I told the boys to compartmentalize the amazing trip to Hawaii from the awful ending of getting home. The boys were troopers and did a great job on the drive. Unlimited screen time works wonders, even in a car that smells of bodily functions. The following week was brutal as we had to get back to all the normal things with no time to adjust. But the trip was awesome, even with the terrible ending. Once again I feel like my life would make a great comedy that people laugh at and thank the heavens it's not their life to live.
And now, on to the pictures...
The PC was pretty cool even if it's not really my thing. The show was amazing though and we all loved the fire dancers.
Your life is always filled with adventures!
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