The Trip Our Co-Travelers Didn't Bargin For

In July, we headed out to Utah to visit my mom and John's mom.  John traveled with us on the flight out, which was on a very cozy regional jet (a mistake never to be repeated by us).  After struggling for nearly an hour to get the children to behave, we finally got Alex asleep on John's lap and the twins somewhat occupied when the flight attendant informed us that the extra mask was on my side of the aisle and Alex would have to move.  We kindly noted that he had just fallen asleep, that the fasten seat belt sign was not illuminated, and that we would move him if any of those factors changed.  She tersely responded that we had to move him immediately, so we reluctantly complied, igniting another series of loud sobbing and child wrangling.  Needless to say, she didn't go down on our all-time-favorite list of flight attendants.

We then attended a memorial service in memory of John's dad at his dad's church in Park City.  It was wonderful to see all of his friends who so dearly loved and missed him.  It also renewed a lot of the emotions we felt in February.  This was definitely not an easy part of the trip.

John then returned home to Texas to work and the kids and I stayed to play with the grandmas.  We went to a fun aquarium, travelled up the mountain to grandma's cabin, drove up the canyon (and on the way down discovered that Zoe gets very car sick as she began screaming hysterically for the whole descent down), and altogether had a wonderful time.  I, of course, lost my wallet for the entire trip.  Fortunately, I discovered it at the airport as I was checking in the rental mini-van--the children had hidden it in a secret compartment in the front seat.  Who even knew there were such secret compartments?  Lucky we found it because we barely made the flight.  We had a wonderful time visiting our moms, my cousin, and my grandpa and can't wait to come back next year!

The way back was sheer delight.  Just as I had the year previous, I handed out M&M bags to all the passengers around us, informing them that they would have earned every last candy by the end of the trip.  Despite my goodwill, I heard hushed whisperings of, "Please say those children aren't sitting by me" or "could those possibly be all her children?" or "oh my goodness, I think she's also pregnant!"  As always, the children surprised me with their complete ingenuity at finding new ways to fight each other and torture me (see below).  At one point, the flight attendant kindly informed me that even though the fasten seat belt sign was not illuminated, that my children all needed to face forward, be seated, and be buckled.  I informed her that this would simply result in further torture for the poor people in front of me who would be kicked with wild abandon by my completely unruly children.  She repeated her advice, to which I responded, "I agree.  Why don't you ask them to remain seated and see how that works out for you?"  I couldn't understand why she suddenly disappeared and didn't say another word to us the whole flight.  I love you too, Delta Airlines.