Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and a Night at the Airport

We finally made it home..after a series of unfortunate events. We said goodbye to Anna and the boys about 8:30 Monday morning (Sunday in USA) and Dalton drove us the 2 hours to
Auckland for our 1:00 flight. When we walked up to the Qantas ticket counter, wondering why nobody else was checking in, this is the sign that we saw. Yes, that's a whiteboard informing us that all Qantas flights had been indefinitely cancelled due to volcanic ash in southern Chile. So, we gathered with the mob of people in line to find out what happens now. Then, a worker lady told us that there wasn't any point in staying in that line because they couldn't rebook our flights. She directed us to another long, slow line to get accommodations. She was wrong. We should've stayed in that line and they would have easily rebooked us onto an Air New Zealand flight. (Yes, every other airline was flying...just not ours.) In some round-about way, we ended up getting on the standby list for a 7:15 Air New Zealand flight. They were hopeful and discouraging at the same time about the chances of us getting on that flight. We had to be back at the airport by 5:30 to find out. Dalton was amazing and stuck with us all day, touring us around Auckland, taking us to eat some awesome burritos on the wharf, toting luggage and kids all over the place, and helping us sort out what to do. On the bright side, we got to see Auckland. Upon returning to the airport, our flight looked more hopeless. The seats that we thought were available were gone and the 9:30 flight was even more overbooked and there were very limited flights the following days. Joel was relentless in talking to anyone that he could to try to get us on that flight. Qantas was absolutely worthless. They could care less if we got out or not. Air New Zealand was amazing and did whatever they could to help us, but it still looked bleak. As we were about to settle for a hotel room, we got the news that the flights from Christchurch didn't come in due to the earthquake, which opened up about 60 spots on our flight. We really didn't know how to respond to getting favor from other's misfortunes, but we were definitely glad to be getting on a flight out. There were so many empty seats on the plane that we had 6 seats to spread out in. We were set to take off (7:15 pm), watched the in-flight safety video with, get this, Richard Simmons. You can watch the video here if you'd like. It's hilarious! Shortly after, they announced there'd be a slight delay due to technical difficulty. A few minutes later (7:54 pm), they announced that it can't be fixed and we'd have to return to the gate to allow a technician on board. At 8:30, they announced that "it's always the small problems that create the most difficulties." Luckily, all this time, they had the tv's going so the kids were happy in lala land. At 9:30 pm, we took off! We landed at LAX at 2:45 pm, still on Monday. There, we had to get our bags, stand in a monstrous line to go through customs, get on a shuttle (with all of our bags and a sleeping Ford on Joel's shoulder), get to the American Airlines terminal, stand in another long, slow line, for the agent to tell us that it's not their fault that we don't have a connection. She spent 15 minutes trying to explain how she has to book us on our original routing, blah, blah, blah, telling us that all of our options aren't going to work out. Thanks. Then, mentions that there is a flight NOW that she can confirm us on to Dallas and then on to Atlanta. We're like, why didn't you tell us that in the first place? So, then we have to rush through LAX. At this point, Joel has been flagged at every security point due to his sabbatabeard. This time was no different. The guy even told him that it was because of his beard and that he looked like the guy from the hangover...Joel's goal. He thinks he still has some work to do though...

We made it to DFW about 10:30. Much to our surprise, everything was closed. Our kids had to settle for cracker jacks and peanuts for dinner. Our flight wasn't leaving for ATL until 6:00 the next morning, so we set up home for the night. Mary Kate didn't sleep one wink. She played in her little "bed" all night stuck on New Zealand time (which was afternoon time). Ford slept most of the night. Joel and I were in and out. We had a great flight to ATL. MK was asleep before we even took off and Ford was content watching Toy Story for the umpteenth time of the summer. Needless to say, we were some happy people to be off a plane and out of the airport, and there was one happy Granna waiting for us at the airport. After Mary Kate refused to take a nap during naptime, this is what I walked in on after my nap...With all the craziness that happened getting home, the kids were rockstars. We're happy to be home, but really missing The Lifseys already.