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!!!
The family started showing up around 3 and from then on it was a crazy house! Not everyone stayed for dinner since they had to go see their other families; however there were 11 of us there for dinner. For dinner we had crab legs, and a little too much to drink! :)
(Brothers & Sisters)
(Cousins)
(Grammie with the In-Laws)
