5 cup family

Now that I have cleared off my desk, put stuff away, and found the computer, I can catch you up on our travels back to Bolivia.

So I put this photo in because it is too cute not to.  This is Rachel kissing my dad good bye at PDX.

Our two day return trip turned into four. We left Portland morning on time. After arriving in Dallas we discovered our next flight to Miami was delayed which would mean we may or may not make the flight to Bolivia. Dan decided to try to change our flight, which he was able to do. The five of us had dinner in the airport, wandered around for a couple of hours, and got on the next flight only to be delayed for an hour due to technical problems (whatever that meant) with the plane.

Unfortunately, we missed the flight to Bolivia by one hour, and our “fun” began. Naomi, Ben, and Rachel were exhausted. It was 12:30 am and we were at the American Airlines customer service counter trying to figure out what to do next. I pulled out the travel DVD player and played Backyardigans for the kids. This held their attention long enough for Dan to find out we got hotel and food vouchers, a stand-by flight the next night, a scheduled flight Wed. night, and our luggage would be held until we left. I will spare you all the details of how we got to the hotel and got our rooms, but we finally made into bed at 3:30am. The kids did amazingly well and I managed to keep myself pulled together too.

The next couple of days are kind of a blur except for two things. We went to the airport again at 11:30 pm to catch the flight. The manager there told us there were seats for us but we would all have to sit apart. Dan told him we couldn’t do that, our kids are too little. He told us to go ask people on the flight to move. Dan said, “That is not my job that is yours. If we can’t sit together let someone else (there were at least 15 people waiting on stand-by) take our places we are fine coming back tomorrow for our scheduled flight.” Well, the guy wasn’t too happy with Dan but he did “try” to do his job. We waited in the runway ramp for 15 minutes trying to keep the kids from melting. Then he came out and told us, “It was too much trouble. You can’t go. We are closing the doors to the plane.” At that moment I started crying. If I didn’t have Rachel’s hand in mine and a bag in the other… well, I felt like punching the guy. We walked back out the ramp to meet the glares of all the people who wanted our five seats. Some lady started to go off on Dan about us giving up our seats and I was so proud that Dan very firmly told her off (in a nice way).

Wednesday night we made it on the flight and arrived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia around 8 am. This time I cried tears of joy because there was only one short 30 minute flight and we would be home. However, that is not what happened. It took us ALL DAY to get home. We had to travel between two airports, twice, the kids each got sick, twice (thankfully they are pros at making it into airsick bags), we discovered we lost one of our 12 bags (this is a photo of all 12 bags in PDX), and I discovered you can sleep while sitting up with your eyes open.

It was one happy hour when we arrived in Cochabamba. A dear friend met us at the airport and it was so good to see her. More friends had fresh, French press coffee waiting for us at our house, there was food in the fridge, fruit on the counter, one happy dog…Lucy, and 5 very tired family members.

So that’s the entire travel story.  Until next time, Daryl.