Adventures in Austin: Our Christmas

This Christmas was a fun one with Knox. Last year he was only a few weeks old, so even though it was sweet, it wasn't very memorable for him. This year was a different story. Knox loved opening gifts and playing with the boxes and wrapping paper. We traveled to Spokane to be with Kyle's family for Christmas and once we got there (I will tell that story in a minute) we had a really great week. Knox adjusted well to the time zone and proceeded to sleep in every day last week (Merry Christmas to us!). So it truly felt like a vacation. We spent a lot of time just relaxing at Kyle's sister's house with her two kiddos and all of their new and exciting toys. It was a low-key, relaxing week and we were sad to leave on Friday. But Sally, Heather, Marek and McKenna will all be here for Spring Break- so we'll be together again before we know it!

Now for our travel saga. We left for Spokane on Thursday evening, Dec. 22nd. Our flight flew out of Austin at 7pm and we were scheduled to have a 45 minute lay-over in Denver and then on to Spokane. Well, that afternoon Denver got a snow storm, so our flight out of Austin was delayed going into Denver. We were scheduled to land at the same time our next flight was scheduled to leave. We were told that the airlines would hold our flight because there were plenty of other people in the same predicament. We arrived in Denver at 9:28 pm and our flight left as scheduled at 9:20 pm- without us. Once we landed it was apparent that there were hundreds of other people who had missed their various connections as well and we were instructed to stand in the customer service line to get help. After waiting in the line for 45 minutes without moving an inch, I went to find help. With Knox as my sympathy points we headed off to the nearest ticket counter. I was informed that we had missed to last flight out to Spokane and the next available flight was on Sunday afternoon (ie- Christmas Day). That was 2 days away! What about back to Austin? I asked. Monday- they could get us back to Austin on Monday. Here is where I started to get a little upset. Long-story short- we were put on stand-by for a 1am flight to Seattle which we found out at 12:50 that we were 2 of only 3 people off of standby who got on. We arrived in Seattle at 3am with no flights going to Spokane in the next 24 hours. Then, we met a group of strangers in the same predicament. And together 10 strangers all rented a 12 passenger van at 3 am and drove 5 hours across a mountain pass to Spokane. We arrived in Spokane at 8am on Friday morning and Kyle's mom picked us up at the airport! It was an insane trip to make alone let alone with a 13 month old, but we did it and Knox was a trooper! Whew- we learned our lesson though. No more Denver airport in the winter. Next time we are flying through Phoenix no matter how much more it costs!

Here is our Christmas photo montage!