Merry Christmas

We reflect upon our Savior's birth and the long journey that Mary and Joseph took before He was born.
We spent Saturday and Sunday trying to fly out to Oregon to spend Christmas with Dana's mom and step dad, Bruce. Since we knew we wanted to spend the holidays with them and Mike and Allison and the kids, we bought tickets in April. People frequently make comments to us about always flying standby and the chances we take trying to get from one place to another, including overseas travel. While we enjoy the thrill of travel and always having a backup plan when we fly standby, there was some relief to having paid tickets, including not having to dress up for our flight. We all took the opportunity to wear jeans on the plane, a luxury we don't have flying standby. We did not get out of Milwaukee on Saturday due to fog. This is a nightmare situation for airlines to have bad weather during one of the busiest travel times of the year. Each flight that is cancelled means lost revenue for them. We were rebooked on a flight through Chicago, not our first choice but the only one we were given, for Sunday. We arrived at the airport with over an hour to spare. They were not able to give us seats together, but at least we were on time, or so we thought. We waited at the United gate and started to get nervous when we were about 20 minutes from departure time. The crew from Skywest, that was flying the United Express flight, came to the gate looking for the agent to board. They asked us to tell the agent they were ready for departure and just needed the passengers on board. Well, at departure time, the agent finally showed up and boarded. We were about 15 minutes late leaving. The captain came on and told us since we were late, we missed our landing slot into Ohare. We would have to wait 30 minutes to leave. We had a short connection in Chicago to get to our Portand flight, so we asked the flight crew 3 different times to check on our connection. No luck. We finally arrived into Ohare and no ground crew to bring us in to the gate. We finally got off the plane to discover our flight, which had already been scheduled to depart, was delayed and scheduled to leave in 5 minutes. Well, we were in concourse C and our Portland flight was in concourse B, needless to say, we did not make it. We stood in line at customer service to find out there was no other flight that we could be confirmed on. We could stand by, but the agent stated that we would likely not make any of the flights due to heavy overbooking. Being tired and frustrated, we were told our bags were in Chicago and to go to Baggage Services to get our bags. Upon arriving there, we were told that since our bags were checked through to Portland, our bags were going there without us on the next flight. So we were without a flight and without bags...and all 3 carseats! We finally made it home via bus to Milwaukee and Madison (with a carseat we had in our van thankfully). Still no word on our bags other than they arrived in Portland on Sunday. We are hoping that we will get some word on our bags and carseats soon. We are making the best of a disappointing situation. Time with our family and bonding with Ian at home.
Wishing you and your family a Merry Christmas and we look forward to seeing you in the new year!