Christmas in Alabama - "the flight"

This year we spent Christmas in Alabama with my family. 95% of my family lives in Alabama and his whole family lives in Houston, TX. So we made a deal when we got married that we would alternate our holiday’s between families. If we did Thanksgiving  in Houston then we would do Christmas in Bama. This year we (mainly Byron) decided that we were going to fly instead of drive. Which was great! I don’t mind so much driving. It does take a while but it is much cheaper than flying and I am cheap. Byron on the other hand HATES driving for any type of “road trip”. This is mainly because he is 6’7” and he finds it very uncomfortable to ride in the car for any period of time without being in pain. So this year we planned ahead (at least somewhat) and bought our plane tickets early.

The Thursday evening before our scheduled Friday flight out we took the three big puppies to the boarding facility. We love the place we board our dogs. This is the only place we have ever brought our puppies to more than once. We love it for many reasons. One they have a large enough kennel to board all 3 dogs together comfortably (they all like to stay together… they get sad when we separate them). Two they get to go to doggie daycare outside most of the day at no extra charge and they love it. This summer they even brought out a kiddie pool and hose for the puppies to play with/ in. Thirdly we only get charged for the night(s) they stay… unlike some places that charge you another night if you drop them off too early or pick them up after 9am. They don’t have extra charges for things. Lastly, I feel like the employees really care about my puppies which is really important to me!

We got back from  dropping the puppies off and I finally "start" my laundry. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing to procrastinate on if I actually put most of my clothes in the dryer to dry… but no… I hang probably 75% of my clothes up to dry. My philosophy is … If I like the way it fits me… it doesn’t go in the dryer… because if it does go in the dryer... it may never fit me again! J So after I got all my loads in the washer and out and hanging up with everything else I could pack, packed… I went to bed (it was like 10ish). I decided it would be better to just go to bed and get up early to finish packing.

So we wake up at like 4am the next morning to finish packing and we are out the door by like 5:15ish. We are driving across town to Byron's parents house who live next to the airport. They were very generous to offer to take us to the airport so that we do not have to pay to leave our car there while we are gone. They were also kind enough to watch little Lola for us while we were out of town.Our flight is scheduled out at 7:45ish.... so we get to the airport at like 6:16ish. we figured this would give us plenty of time to get our bags checked, through security and to the gate. We were a little surprised when we got to the airport and saw that there were not many cars there to drop off people. then we looked a little closer and saw the incredibly long lines to do curbside check in. It was ridiculous! So we decided we had a better chance to just go inside and check baggage. Well with line was shorter is still debatable because this line was ridiculous as well!! I have never seen the lines this long at the airport before! So we wit in the checked baggage lane for approximately an hour... which isn't terrible considering how many loopy loos the line did. next we head to security which was pretty quick and get to our gate with time to spare!! whew!!

This is a blurry picture of what the line looked like at the airport!!! Crazy!!!

We try to always check in online so we get boarded sooner and get to pick a better seat. We try to pick the seats that will give Byron the most leg room possible. For some reason even though I Checked in and printed out our boarding passes at exactly the same time... I was given an A group boarding pass and Byron was given a B group boarding pass. So it was up to me to find the best seats! I think i did pretty well! I git us front row seats and even better... I ended up sitting by a hunting/fishing TV personality. I don't remebmer what show he was from... but he and Byron talked about hunting and fishing almost the whole way to Alabama while I listened squised in between the two. :) The flight was pretty unremarkable (besides the great conversations). We get off the plane quickly since we are front row and get to the baggage claim location pretty quickly. We didn't have to wait too long for the bags to start coming. Our first bag was one of the first one's to come. This bag had all the blankets I had made for my nieces and nephews. I joked and told Byron... "well at least we have this one if none of the other bags come!" That's all funny and HaHa of course... untill someone' sbag didn't make it to Alabama and that someone's bag happens to be mine with all of my shoes (besides what I was wearing), all of toiletries, straightening iron and my bundt cake pan. All of which of csourse are necessities. So  I have to go to the "my bag didn't make it on this flight office" and figure out what we do next.

The lady in that office was very nice and gave me two options. Option 1: the next flight from Houston was due to Alabama and approximately 1 hour... so I could wait for it... and if I did wait I would get $100 travel voucher to use in the future. Or Option 2: I could have it Fedexed to my dad's house (which is where I was staying while I was in Alabama) it "should" get there in the next day or two.next,I had to check with my dad and make sure he was ok waiting around for the hour (the airport was about 2-3 hours from his house). He was feeling extra generous and said it was up to me I chose option 1!! We decided to go get lunch while we waited. We had a good lunch at Zoe's Kitchen and came back to the airport at the scheduled time.

 So, once again I waited for my bag to come and.... it was one of the last bags out!!! Woo Hoo!!! I have all of my belongings now safely in Alabama to spend the week with me!

The rest of Christmas is to be continued in another post... ( I write too much and this post is already pretty long) there is more excitement to come! :)