![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/225\/2013\/06\/airpor-hell.jpg\" "\\"airpor")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe plan was good, as plans go. I spent Monday cleaning the house from top to bottom (a necessary precaution in Florida, lest the bugs and mold overrun your house while you are away), doing laundry, making lists of things to bring, and slowly packing. We put the kids to bed at seven and figured we could bang out the rest of the packing in two hours, get in bed by nine, and get five solid hours of sleep before we had to get up and get ready to go to the airport.<\/p>\n
We finally fell into bed around midnight. Everything was packed, but baskets of clothes that had been weeded out and unpacked in an effort to make everything fit were strewn haphazardly about the house. Normally that would have bothered me, but exhaustion plus sheer dread of what was coming in two short hours overwhelmed any other concern.<\/p>\n
Snooze buttons are the devil. The Ogre hit ours twice and we woke up 45 minutes late. We showered, threw toiletries in suitcases, kids in clothes, suitcases and kids in car, and sped out of Ave Maria.<\/p>\n
Only to speed right back in, having forgotten ID\u2019s, passes, phone chargers, and diapers. Once we finally had everything, we left again, only an hour behind schedule.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s an important thing to know about how we travel: my aunt and uncle work for Southwest, and since we\u2019re the only ones in my entire extended family who live out of state, they give us lots of buddy passes to come back and see everyone. That used to mean that we could come back a lot; now it means that we can all come back. We have to have five passes, since only little Lincoln flies for free.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s awesome be able to fly for free. There\u2019s no way we\u2019d be able to visit otherwise. But traveling on buddy passes is basically like traveling standby, except we\u2019re after the people who are flying standby. So we have to get to the airport at least two hours ahead of the scheduled flight time.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, we did not make it. Sienna and I checked ourselves and our luggage in about an hour and a half before the flight, and the Ogre met us a half-hour later with the other kids, having taken the car to long-term parking twenty light years away. I was sure there was no way we\u2019d make the flight.<\/p>\n
But we did. And get this \u2014 the flight was wonderful. 2 hours and 45 minutes is no short flight with four kids, but they all slept or played quietly. Even Angry Lincoln.<\/p>\n
We got into Houston Hobby airport with an hour to spare for our snappy connecting flight to Dallas. I was feeling ridiculously optimistic. The big issue is always getting out of Ft. Lauderdale; Houston to Dallas is no problem. They have about 20 flights a day going between those two cities. I was, in fact, downright chipper about having such an easy day of travel and getting in before noon.<\/p>\n
Alas. I should know better by now than to feel optimism.<\/p>\n
Cancelled flights. Delayed flights. Overbooked flights. Angry customers. Lines and lines of angry customers, trying to get to Dallas. Overwhelmed, stressed Southwest employees. Clusterfrakery and chaos.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the other thing about flying on buddy passes: since we\u2019re technically flying for free, when there are paying customers to deal with, we have to stay out of the way. Which meant, on Tuesday at Houston Hobby Airport, that we really couldn\u2019t even ask the employees what was up with the flights, if there might be open seats later in the day, or if we would even get to Dallas at all that day until the rest of the customers had cleared out. My aunts, God bless them, tried to help us on the internet end, but a snafu with the website kept it from updated and reflecting the new, cancelled-flight-and-chaos status of Houston Hobby.<\/p>\n
Do you know what is even worse than being stuck in a small, dingy, two-terminal airport with four kids under 8 for 9 hours? Not knowing when or if you will ever be able to leave. We could have rented a car and driven, but all the rental cars were sold out and we had no car seats with us. My dad volunteered to come get us, but it seemed so silly, when there was a possibility that we could leave in an hour or two. And yet, after a few hours, I started to feel like our family\u2019s future was going to look like this:<\/p>\n