Our Family Vacation: at the airport

Monday, May 23rd--The day finally came....we had been planning this trip to Florida for 5 months.

Here are the kids at the Tulsa airport watching the airplanes....they were excited!!!

First flight.....from Tulsa to Dallas....went great. In Dallas we only had 30 minutes to get onto our connecting flight to Florida but we were quick considering we have 2 kids and made it on the plane with 10 minutes to spare.

Just after sitting down they annouced overhead that a storm was coming in and so they were going to play it safe and wait for it to pass before taking off. Okay---no problem, it's only lunch time and a small delay will still give us plenty of time to get to Florida and enjoy the hotel. So the rain came and we waited and then it started hailing and we waited.

An hour had passed since we sat down on the plane and they announced overhead that they were waiting to here if the hail was large enough that the airplane would need to be inspeced for damage. So we waited some more and about 45 min later they told us that indeed the plane would have to be inspected. We were told to go ahead and get off and grab some food because it would be at least another hour. So we did just that and then went back to our gate and waited some more. Then they announced that the hail damage was too much and that we could no longer use that plane but they would try to find us another plane (so now I am starting to get frustated....we should have been in Floriday by now).

After another hour of waiting they informed us that the flight is cancelled and we would have to try to rebook to another flight. Craig jumped in line and got us tickets on the 5:45 pm flight. Hey, at least we will make it there sometime tonight. So we took the long stroll with the kids over to other side of the airport to  the gate only to find out that flight was being cancelled too!!  And the next flight available for us would be at 5:05 pm the NEXT DAY!!! 

The kids really had no idea what was going on....but me and Craig were getting frustrated and dissapointed!! We had nothing except our carry-on bag of things for the kids to do on the plane. We found a hotel nearby the aiport, Craig walked over to the gas station to find us some dinner and diapers (their last package) and we made due with what we had.

We got to enjoy the hotel continental breakfast which was nice but had to check out at noon....so we went back to the airport and waited and waited and waited for our flight which didn't leave until 5:05 pm. Airports are really NOT very entertaining--especially for kids. Somehow the kids were AWESOME during this whole ordeal and found ways to entertain themselves.....

Austin played his Nintendo DS......A LOT!!!

And Mikayla did a lot of coloring.

Well, we finally boarded the airplane and sat in our seats ready to take off to Florida--30 hours later than originally scheduled. As soon as we sat down in our seats they announced overhead....."there is a storm coming so if everyone can hurry and get seated we might be able to take off before the storm gets here."

NOT AGAIN!!!

Did we make it out of DALLAS?........STAY TUNED!!