An Epic Journey

As many of you know, my brother Doug got married this weekend. We left on Saturday for a quickie trip to Denver, via O'Hare.

The kids were pretty upbeat when we left Syracuse - Lily was excited to be going to Denver and to the wedding. The last wedding she went to was Dave and Jenny's, so she doesn't really remember what a wedding is. She did know there would be cake.







Wolfie nursed and napped his way to O'Hare. There had been a 2 hour delay in leaving Syracuse because of weather/radar problems in Chicago. We tried to rebook ourselves, but the airline agents assured us that we would have no problem making our connection (cue ominous music).






We don't have any photos from O'Hare because we were too busy running from gate to gate. Chicago got the most rainfall in 24 hours that it has ever gotten, thanks to Hurricane Ike. The runways were flooded; people were jammed into the airport because the roads were too flooded for arriving passengers to leave. Our connecting flight had, of course, left a loooong time before we arrived. Initially, we were told that there was no way to get to Denver before the wedding (Sunday noon) so they scheduled us to head back to Syracuse on Sunday morning. We weren't very happy at the prospect of spending the night in Chicago and missing the wedding. Erich called back and asked the rebooking folks to get more creative. Then we started running - maybe we could make it on the flight to Dallas, and get to Denver that way. Maybe Sal Lake. Wolfgang was extremely unhappy with all the running - I eventually had to pick him up over my shoulder and just go, despite the fact that everyone looked at me like I was kidnapping him (why would you kidnap a kid that loud? I don't know). We finally made it on a flight to LAX. The agent at the counter was very nice and scooted us ahead of all the people on standby. I like to think the weeping helped.



Crazy eyes set in on the flight to LAX.













Flying coach is so cozy.

We made it to LA, where I was able to call Kelly, who kindly looked up the closest Target to our hotel so that we could buy clothes to wear to the wedding (our luggage was long gone). We finally made it to Denver around 11:30, filed our luggage report, and had the kids in bed by 12:45 AM Denver Time (so, you know, 2:45 AM Eastern). They were sure to be well-rested and happy for the wedding the next day!