23 Hours of Travel!

At 4am on December 23rd we started our trip to Wisconsin. Gil picked us up an we headed to SFO. Our flight from SFO to Dallas was on time. Both Russ and I were surprised since we have not had good luck with American being on time. We joked that maybe we would make it to Wisconsin without any problems! (We spoke too soon!)

We get to Dallas, grab a snack and head to our gate. At that time everything looked like we were going to take off on time! Then we get a call from Mom. They were suppose to leave the San Jose airport at 7am flying direct to Chicago. Its 10am and they still have not left! She tells us that they are suppose to be leaving at 11am, we thought okay no big deal they had a long layover in Chicago they will still make it!

12:30 Dallas time and we find out our flight has been delayed! We are now leaving at 2:30 which is not good since we have a flight from Chicago to La Crosse at 4:25. We are all crossing our fingers that our flight to La Crosse is going to be delayed and we will be able to make it.

I think we finally left Dallas at 3pm. We got lucky there was good wind and instead of a 2 and half hour flight it was only an hour and 45 minutes! We called Mom as soon as we landed in Chicago. They just landed also and are running to the gate to make the flight to La Crosse. We tell her to try and hold the plane that we are on our way as soon as we get to the gate. It took a long time to taxi so by the time we got to the gate they had already given our seats away and closed the doors. We missed the flight by about 10 minutes.

Now is the fun part, Chicago is a mad house, flights getting delayed and canceled left and right. We get in line to get a new flight, and Russ gets on the phone to see if he can get something faster. They put us on the next flight to La Crosse, 8pm. Okay no problem we can do that. As soon as they were finalizing it, the flight was canceled. The next best thing was to put us on the 9am flight the next morning. We weren't very happy about it, but that was the only choice.(Russ and Steph in our spot where we thought we were going to have to sleep)

We found a place where we could lay down and sleep, but then I noticed there was a 9pm flight to Rochester MN (about an hour from my Grandma's). So we hurry and call and get on that flight! Whohooo we aren't going to have to sleep in the airport after all! 8:45 rolls around and instead of boarding it says the plane is now leaving at 9:30. Lets just say every half hour the same thing happened we were suppose to be boarding but instead the flight would be pushed back another half hour.

At midnight we finally get on the plane, but then we sit and get de-iced for another 45 minutes. The plane finally took off around 1am. We got into Rochester at 2:15, grabbed a cab and started our drive to La Crosse. The roads were dry and the drive should have only taken us an hour. The cab driver drove VERY slow and we didn't get to Grandma's house until 4:03am.

All I have to say is we are never traveling back to the East Coast in the Winter again!!!

JACKPOT! We are going to ALASKA!!!

WHOHOOOOO!!! Its only 226 days away! :)

On our last cruise we pre-purchased a future cruise. You paid $100/person and they gave you a credit of $250 to use towards the deposit of your next cruise. Ever since we got back from that cruise in January we have been watching rates trying to find a good deal for a cruise we wanted to go on.

Today we hit the jackpot! Norwegian sent an email about a sale with an 8 category upgrade. I knew the sale was a bunch of crap since they seem to raise the prices when they do that, but I decided to check the rates and see whats out there.

I found an Alaskan cruise for $499 for an inside room. I have been debating if I really wanted an inside room or if I wanted to pay for the balcony. I looked at the excursions, I was hooked, screw the balcony we can get an inside room and use the extra money to go on AWESOME excursions!

So we booked it! Here's where we are going:

What makes it even better is it goes out of Vancouver and into Seattle. This way we can see both places. I'm hoping we can go up a day or two early and check out Vancouver and Victoria and then stay in Seattle for a night after.

Now I can't stop looking at excursions, but I will save those for a different post another day!

Labor Day Weekend

The past couple years we have headed up to Tahoe for Labor Day. We go over to Reno one of the days and stuff our faces at the Rib Cook-off. This year was no exception.



Friday:

We headed out early in hopes of not hitting any traffic! We did really well until we got into the mountains. All of a sudden we stopped, and were stopped for 25 minutes. Turns out they had to close the rode because of an accident. We got to the house, my Dad, Shu-Jen and Larry were already there (drove up Thursday night). We started Russ's birthday celebrations early, dad took us to Conrads at the Biltimore for a nice steak dinner. After dinner we sat at the bar and played video poker and got free drinks. We stumbled out of the bar around 9:30 headed back to the house and started to pay Wii. We were all in bed by 11:30.

Saturday:

We headed to Reno for the Rib Cook-off! Tons of yummy food, beer, margaritas and rides for the kids. Falynn & Frankie met us in Reno with the kids. This year we got lucky, it wasn't as hot as it has been in the past! We also scored a table in the shade! After pigging out on ribs we walked around and let Lexi go on the rides. It started to get hot around 2 so we headed back to the house where we hung out, played Wii, and went in the hot tub.

Sunday:

I will leave for another post.

Denver

Russ and I went to Denver for a conference for work. We flew out on Wednesday getting there early enough to do some walking around. Thursday we were in class all day.

Friday we skipped out on the morning session and took a bus to Golden. In Golden we went on a tour of the Coors Brewing Factory. We had to hurry so we could get back in time for the afternoon workshops. The last workshop was for "Under 40's" since most of our profession is 60+ year old men. It was interesting to meet VERY successful Business Brokers who are under 40. Then we were off to a Happy Hour with them followed by the Colorado Rockies game.

Saturday we had workshops all day. The lunch was very interesting, the speaker was Bob Gray who is in the Guiness Book of World Records for memory and being able to write forward, backward, backwards upside down, and upside down as a mirror with his left hand, right hand, and both of his feet! He was very entertaining! Saturday night we went to a nice dinner and had some really good steaks. After dinner we went back to the bar at our hotel, it was on the 27th floor and had amazing views of the city and moutains.

Sunday before we had to catch our shuttle we walked to the Capital and stood on the step that is exactly "1 mile above sea level."

It was a good trip, I would have loved to stay longer and been able to see Vail, oh well maybe next time!