The Franger Family

Franger Family Blog

May 14 2011

The journey home

Posted in Hawaii 2011 No comments

The journey home

No matter how much I say to myself “this time will be different” and that we will not be stressed running around at the last minute…it NEVER happens that way. I don’t care if we start packing the week before we cannot seem to ever get out the door like a normal family. There always seems to be honey in our shoes. Well this time the journey begins at 6 am. Blaine decides to do 2 loads of laundry… not planning on that. He also decides to back up all our photos, which is a total time sucker and needs undivided attention… not planning on that either. There were several other things I was not planning on that put us back on our usual “we are already behind before waking schedule”. In our usual fashion, we literally threw everything we needed to pack in the family room, pushed the furniture together to hopefully keep the muffin occupied for a while and preceded to pack/clean for 4 hours. I swear we have magic marry poppins suitcases that grow as we fill them, the only problem we have EVERY time is weight. Consistently, we are always the couple weighing and re-weighing our bags to the annoyance of everyone in line doing the suitcase shuffle at the check in counter. Pretending to be surprised having NO idea how they got that heavy, and praying for a 51.9 weigh in and a kind agent (who we select by the way as we wait.) Anyway back to the morning, the stress is totally building on top of my last jittery Kona coffee buzz needing to eat something bad. The morning before a trip is always the breakfast of “fridge clean out of random selections”, say… some peanut butter on a rice cake, some seaweed and black beans, as much fruit as our intestines can take and seven glasses of milk to polish it off! After all that I feel sick but have no chance at sitting down to let it pass, I gotta wash every dish in the joint and keep an eye on Ellary making sure she does choke on the leftover bits of sweet potato from several nights ago she is having for breakfast. After all this we have negative minutes to get out the door have not put a single thing in a suitcase. We throw everything in as Blaine sits on one and I cram the other, and as we are both in a frenzy of sweaty hotness (no, not like that!) we here a loud bang behind us… Ellarys chin has met the edge of the coffee table in a bad way and the blood starts gushing from her NOT breathing face. Once she catches her breath and soaks me with blood I take a deep breathe and have a look. Yikes! There is almost a window from the 3 holes that almost tore right through the front and the back of her bottom lip. As much as wanted to stop everything we still had very little time so I called my mom and handed E the phone and Grandma started distracting her for the desperate 5 minutes we needed to get the heck in the car. The car ride was rushed and crazy and poor babycakes kept forgetting about her mouth and bumping it and crying over and over. We got to the airport and returned the Jeep all with 2 minutes until the computer check in closed for our flight. The agent didn’t even have enough time to check in our lap child. Our bags were 16 lbs over (quite normal really) but with such little time we actually had to pay the $30 extra to make it $50 for one bag, LAME. They also said our carry on “personal” items were too big but let it slide. Blaine and I were just dripping with sweat and got into the long security line with 15 minutes to spare before departure. We got stuck behind 3 people in wheel chairs and another couple (on our flight) got expedited 2 rows ahead of us with their ginormous stroller because of lack of time… guess they didn’t get the memo we were on the same flight so we waited in line. Then low and behold Blaine gets selected for a “random” search. We were the last people on the flight of course and they has to re-open gate the door :)

Having 2 roller bags, 2 backpacks, a bag of burritos and other extra crap we were holding not including baby, peoples heads were turning as we headed to the rear of the aircraft. Ellary grabbed at least 2 peoples hair, 1 shirt and several chairs as we wiggled down the aisle. It was like bush wacking without a machete. We finally get to our row and we were sharing with a young father of 2 girls and his wife. He could see how flustered I was trying to turn myself around. Blaine was still struggling to push and pull both roller bags. The nice guy next to us was standing there patiently and he could see I was quite unable to shove my oversized bag under the seat, and asked “do you need me to hold her?” I didn’t even reply I just handed Ellary to a perfect stranger. A flight attendant asked me that once a while back, but she sounded like a man with emphysema and I just couldn’t, and hey this guy seemed nice enough. Finally Blaine arrived and took her back we all sat down and the flight commenced. All in all it went by super fast! Ellary ate her weight in baby food and snacks and took a snooze. Smooth sailing! Second flight from Seattle to Portland was a mere 25 minutes and she slept. After getting the car and the hour drive home she slept some more. Thank God for a wonderful little traveler. Not even a fuss the whole day! Put her down ay 2 am and she slept till 8am and woke up happy to re-discover her long lost toys. Yea for home!

Wondering how it will all fit!