Yesterday started out just the way that most days start out for me. I got up around 6:30 and woke up the school kids to get them ready for school. After they were dressed I made sure they made their lunches, and then I sat all the kids down and gave them breakfast. Around 7:40 I sent the big kids out the door to walk to school, then I began my normal morning routine of taking care of the younger kids and trying to clean up the house. Dave arrived to get started on painting. He mentioned to me that it looked like our window in the stairway might have a leak, and that is bothering me. It has never leaked before, and if there is a serious leak then he won’t be able to paint there until it’s dry and if it’s been leaking for a long time that could cause some damage to that brand new drywall. But he never came back to say anything more about it, and any thoughts of a possible leak left my mind when I saw this message from Auntie Laura on my Facebook account:
If you want to come to nc, you will have to buy your airfare. Its an open end compassion fare. Let me know, i will send the info you will need. Love you. LJ
I was stunned. What info is she talking about? Of course I wanted to go to North Carolina. I’ve wanted to go for years to see Great Grandma Ruby and Grandma Katrina and get five generation pictures taken. But we had never had the money to do it, and now that we are a little better off financially we haven’t been able to go because the kids have school and Kyle has work, and we just haven’t made the time to do it. So I asked what info she was talking about and asked if everything was ok with everyone out there. She replied only with a hospital address for Great Grandma Ruby. NOW I knew that something was up. I asked what happened, but she didn’t respond.
Next I went to text mom to find out if she knew what was going on, and she beat me to it. She had sent me a message saying that Great Grandma Ruby was in the hospital and wasn’t doing very well and that she was on her way to go see her. Mom told me that if I wanted to come too, not to worry about the money, that she and Laura would figure that part out. I told her that I am NOT worried about the money, we have money in the bank and we are getting a nice tax return this year as well (not to mention the job offer that Kyle received last night that would be a higher paying job if he takes it). So mom said that she and Jenny and baby James were all leaving right then, and Auntie Laura emailed me their flight info a little later.
At this point I called Kyle at work. I told him that Great Grandma Ruby wasn’t doing very well, and that Mom and Jenny and James were on their way to go see her, and I told him that we were going too. I asked him to call airlines to find out about flights that were leaving that day and to find out about this compassion ticket that Auntie Laura told me to ask for, and I got started on packing. As soon as the little girls saw me getting the suitcases out they could tell that something was going on. Dinah was very interested and wanted to know why I was packing. I told her and Chloe that we were going to be getting on an airplane today to go see Great Grandma Ruby before she dies. I feel like I spent the day in a whirl. I couldn’t focus on what needed to be packed. I usually make a list of what each person needs and then start packing things for one person at a time. This time I just started with one person at a time and packing stuff up for them. I packed all of the church clothes in a separate suitcase, since I figured we would probably be attending a funeral while we were there. I did end up forgetting several things in my packing, either because I wasn’t thinking of them, or I couldn’t find them and I didn’t have time to search the house before leaving.
Kyle had some difficulty with finding flights and compassion rates. When he talked to Delta they wanted to charge us a thousand dollars per ticket, each way, and we needed seven tickets. That was completely insane. After calling a couple more airlines, Kyle was starting to feel like maybe we should just drive it. I nearly fell over at that suggestion; it’s a three day drive if you are doing nothing but driving, and we were trying to get there BEFORE Great Grandma Ruby died. But I told him to try calling American Airlines, because that is the airline that mom and Jenny were using, and if they couldn’t come up with a better price, then we would get in the car and drive it (I still thought it was crazy, but I was willing to compromise 😛 ). Kyle called American Airlines and their prices were half of what Delta had wanted and the American Airlines tickets were round trip with a flexible return date, so he booked our flight and came home.
Mom called me sometime before Kyle got home and told me that they were at the airport now. I told her that Kyle was working on flight information and then we would be on our way too. She wasn’t expecting to hear me say that “we” would be on our way, as she only hoped that I could come. She asked if we were able to find somebody to watch the kids so that we could come and I told her they are coming too, I told her that we are ALL coming, and she just broke down in tears. I could tell that that meant a lot to her, and it was more than she could have hoped for.
The big kids came home from school and we told them not to take their shoes off because we were leaving again. Dinah decided she was going to be the one to tell them that we were going on an airplane. Ethan was very upset to hear this. He REALLY wanted to have 100% attendance this trimester. We got diapers changed and got all the kids and suitcases loaded up in the van. Amy came over and picked up the Girl Scout troop checkbook and told me not to worry about the meeting for this week. Then we were off, on a bigger adventure than we have ever experienced before. I was stressing all the way to the airport. I knew we were running late. Kyle had the news radio station on so that he could hear the traffic reports and know which roads to avoid. One of the biggest reports on the radio was of a high speed chase that was happening near Taylorsville or West Valley City. An update on the high speed chase came on the radio and said that they had the car trapped and a section of road closed at Redwood Road near the 215 freeway. As soon as they said that, Kyle looked up and said “Uh, isn’t that where we are at right now?” I freaked out because it was where we were at, and I knew we wouldn’t make it to the airport if we got stuck in that blockage. I looked to the right and looked at the streets off the freeway off-ramp, and there were LOTS of police cars and tons of traffic where people wanted to get through that intersection but didn’t know that the police had it blocked off. We drove right by that mess and kept on towards the airport, and I was grateful that the road we were on was clear so we could do that. 🙂
We arrived at the airport parking, and got all the kids unloaded, and then we handed each kid (Ethan through Dinah) their car seat. We didn’t know whether we would need them on the plane, but we were sure that we would need them when we got to North Carolina and rented a van. Chloe and Lydia weren’t able to carry their car seats because they are little girls and their car seats are the biggest ones, so it was tricky for me to carry Adam, in his seat, and two other car seats, while Kyle had Chloe and Lydia and all of the suit cases to deal with. But we got to the shuttle stop and waited for the shuttle to arrive.
The shuttle took forever to finally get to us and then before heading to the airport, it had to finish it’s rounds around the parking lot. By the time we finally got inside the airport and were checking our bags we were told we were not going to make the flight that we were supposed to be on. The lady behind the counter was not very nice about it either. I mean come on, I’ve got seven little kids to deal with at the moment, you can at least be polite when you tell me that we are too late. They did eventually find another flight to get us on. Our original flight had us going through Chicago, and then on to Charlotte, NC but this new flight had us going to Dallas in the evening, then after a several hour layover on to Charlotte in the morning. We decided that if that was the quickest way, we would just do it. We got our boarding passes, and continued on through security, and then onto our plane.
Our seats were near the back of the plane, and the plane wasn’t super full, so we were able to strap the big car seats down in empty seats. The kids were not allowed to sit in their booster seats on the plane, so those went in the overhead compartments. The kids were rather excited to be on a plane, and they were checking everything out. Finally we took off and we were in the air, I think the kids really liked the take off. Adam and Lydia were lap sitters and all of the kids were really well behaved on the flight.
We arrived at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport around 9:30pm, and our flight out to Charlotte wasn’t until 7:30 the next morning. I had NO desire to sit in an airport all night long with 7 kids and nowhere to keep them contained, so we went to see about finding a hotel. But first we had to figure out how to get out of the airport. The Dallas airport is HUGE! When Kyle asked where we were supposed to go, the man that he was talking to told him to go around the corner right there and then just down the hall and then there would be a place to find out about the hotels. Well that hall that he was talking about just kept going and going and going. Eventually we asked someone else where we were supposed to be going, and he escorted us to go find someone that could help us find a place to stay for the night. They were very helpful and even called the hotel and got it all set up, two rooms, next to each other, and at a “distress rate” since the only reason we were looking for rooms was because our layover was just too long. The lady also went ahead and fixed up our seats for our morning flight so that we wouldn’t have to wait for someone to do that for us in the morning. And then she walked us out and waited for the hotel shuttle with us.
Our hotel rooms were small with two beds each, and our rooms were next to each other but they didn’t have a door to adjoin them. Kyle took Adam and the boys and went to one room and I stayed with the four girls in the other room. I texted mom to let her know that we were in Dallas, and that our next flight was in the morning and that we were in a hotel and were going to take a nap before heading back to the airport. She texted me back asking me to call her, so I did. I thought she wanted me to clarify what was going on with our getting there, but she interrupted me and told me that Grandma passed away. I was sad. I was too late. I have been wanting to take my family to go see her for years, and I waited too long. I just responded with a simple ok, and said that we will be there in the morning, and I got off the phone. Then I told the girls that Great Grandma Ruby already died. Without skipping a beat, Dinah said “It’s ok mom. We will see her when she is presurrected.” This made me smile. Oh, the truths spoken by a child. I LOVE that that was her very first thought. I sent Kyle a message to let him know, and then we all tried to get some sleep.
At 4:30 the alarm on my phone woke me up and I sent Kyle a text to make sure he was getting up too, and to decide what we were going to do about breakfast. Kyle wanted to take a shower before we left, so that meant that I could let the girls sleep a little longer. We didn’t have our suitcases because they went straight to North Carolina and so we had slept in what we were wearing, so we didn’t really need to get dressed before leaving. After Kyle showered, we just needed to brush hair, put shoes on, and gather up all the car seats and we were out of there. We went down to the lobby and waited for the hotel shuttle to take us back to the airport. We already had our boarding passes all set, because the nice lady got them all fixed up last night and so we just got in line to go through security. After we were through security, and had found our gate, Kyle went to the little food court area nearby and got some McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches and orange juice for breakfast. As we sat there eating, we attracted a bit of attention, as airport employees and other random people passed and saw how many kids we had they just thought we were amazing. To be taking ALL these kids on an airplane!
We finished eating and made sure to take the kids to the bathroom and then it was time to get on our second plane. This flight was less full than our first one. We were told that there were only about 20 people flying coach, and about half of them were us. Our seats were still in the back of the plane, but each of our kids pretty much could take their own row. This time the kids were even more well behaved than our flight yesterday, basically because we had so little sleep during the night, that most of them conked out while we were in the air and slept the whole way to North Carolina. When the plane landed, Dinah sat up and asked me why nobody brought her a drink while we were in the air. I told her that she was asleep when they passed out drinks. She was kind of surprised and didn’t believe me, which I thought was funny. With all the kids, we waited until we were the last ones off the plane. We had to wake up the kids that were still sleeping, and get all the car seats and carry-on bags. But while Kyle and I were doing that, the pilot of the plane came back and asked if all these kids were good on the flight, and when he was told that they had been very good, he asked them if they would like to come up and see how to fly a plane. They were all excited about that idea, so they followed the pilot to the front, while I continued trying to get everything together so we could get off. Kyle went to the front with the kids to get some pictures:
After finally getting everything together, and giving the car seats back to the kids to carry, we were finally off the plane. As we walked through the terminal to go find the baggage claim area, we were again attracting attention. Families of our size are not very common in most places of the world. As we walked through the terminal I heard a man exclaim “THAT’S the way to do it! Make every kid carry their own seat!” That made me laugh. The Charlotte airport was a lot smaller than the Dallas airport so it was a lot easier to find the baggage claim area, and right next to the baggage claim were the car rental counters. 😀 I was grateful that they weren’t far away. I stayed near the baggage claim with all the kids and all of our car seats and luggage, while Kyle went to go find a set of wheels big enough for our whole family. He found someone that had a 12 passenger van that we could rent, and then we had to figure out how to get everything and everyone out to wait for the shuttle so we could go get the van. It wasn’t easy, but we finally accomplished it. Then we got all the seats buckled into the van and we were off to find Auntie Laura’s place. Some of the kids were confused at getting into this random van and driving away. One of them asked if we were stealing it! Kyle and I had to explain that we paid them some money so that we can borrow it for the time that we are in North Carolina.
We drove around aimlessly for a few minutes while we waited for mom or Jenny or Auntie Laura to respond with an address of where to meet them, and after Kyle got the map on his smart phone all set up we were on our way. We found them at Auntie Laura’s house, and we spent some time there while mom cooked up some food for everyone, and we discussed what was going on.
After everyone had a chance to eat, Auntie Laura said that Grandma Katrina wanted everyone to come over to her place. So we got back into the van and went to Grandma Katrina’s house. We saw this Shell station on the way, and I thought it was totally awesome! The picture isn’t that great though. Jenny had my real camera, and Kyle tried to use his phone camera to take a picture just as the light turned green and we had to get moving again.
It was about an hour drive to Grandma’s house, and when we got there, she wasn’t actually there, but she knew we were coming and so the house was unlocked for us and we went in. As soon as I was through the door, I saw things that I remember seeing when I was a kid. First was the table made of a sheet of glass sitting on rock/driftwood (I don’t actually know what it’s made out of…):
Then I noticed the painting of the ship on the wall, and I remember that too:
When we went upstairs we found that the table was piled high with food that some of our other relatives had brought over for Grandma Katrina, and Grandma Katrina is super glad that we came over with a whole bunch of mouths to help her eat it all. 🙂 So we have spent the evening spending time with Grandma Katrina, and helping her to eat some of this food. The kids have also been having a blast playing with Grandma’s slot machine. It only takes slugs, but it makes a whole much of noise and lights up, and the kids thought it was just great fun.
We also have been trying to figure out how to fly Debby out here and have her get here BEFORE the funeral tomorrow. I didn’t realize that she didn’t know, or that she would have wanted to come, otherwise I could have said something to her before we left and she could have come with us. Talking to mom about it, she didn’t tell anybody else. She said that Jenny knows because mom needed somebody to travel with, and Sandy might know, because she is going to be watching Jenny’s kids, and now Debby knows too, but mom said that Patsy, Wendy, David, Jonathan, and Tiffany still don’t know. It bugs me that mom didn’t tell anybody. Also I found out that mom knew on Sunday, while she was at my house, that Great Grandma Ruby was in the hospital and wasn’t expected to leave it alive. But she didn’t bother to tell anybody else about it until yesterday, and by then we were too late.
We are going to be spending the night here tonight. I think our family will be sleeping in Great Grandma Ruby’s room. Kyle and I can share the bed with Adam, and then there is plenty of room on the floor for the rest of our kids. And tomorrow we will go to Grandma’s funeral.
