Vacation

We made it. Well, almost. We're actually in the air somewhere between Atlanta and Miami. But I'm confident that within the next hour, we will have made it. Luggage, passports, cruise boarding passes, and all. Not that I didn't try to leave one of the passports (Robbie's) at home in the scanner. Or the boarding passes for the cruise on my desk under a pile of papers at school. Of course, it wouldn't be a Manna event without a fair share of drama. We wouldn't have it any other way.

Our flight from Manchester (just north of Boston and a lot cheaper during spring break) landed in Atlanta on time, but it didn't reach the gate until 9:20. We didn't get off the plane until 9:30. Our next flight left at 9:50. This posed a problem. Particularly when traveling with an over-tired toddler who was still wide awake and an exasperated husband who was convinced we would miss the flight. However, since I conjured a lint roller in the middle of the T last week just by thinking about it (yes, I needed one and figured I'd find someone with one - and then ran into a friend in the middle of the T whose friend opened her purse to reveal a lint roller), holding a plane for twenty minutes seemed like child's play.

Well, child's play if you include fastening a child into a stroller while traveling through the B Concourse at break-neck speed while holding on to headphone plugs that had fallen out of my already overflowing purse as a child-safe activity. I don't, actually. We jetted (pun intended) past twenty gates, down an escalator (yes, unsafely with the stroller - there was no time for an elevator), on a tram, through crowds of dawdling travelers, up another endless escalator, down a food court, and past nine more gates. Only to find that our flight was delayed. Thank God!

We're now making our final descent into the Miami airport. Robbie is sleeping. Justin has stopped cursing under his breath. And I finally got a few minutes to myself to let you know how great family vacation is once you have a kid to really make it. But I'm not leaving my man-to-man defense for zone anytime soon; the woman behind me nearly had three nervous break-downs in the past ninety minutes with her kids arguing. And that was with the husband taking one of them to another row.

Now it's time for me to return my seat to it's locked-and-up-right-position (not that I ever move it) and re-attach the trays to the seats in front of me. But, before I sign off... Thank goodness for fabulous people on this flight. We wound up sitting next to teenage boys on both flights and both were such gentlemen about moving to another seat to give us more room. Since I always complain about people on planes, I need to give credit where it's due.

I'll be blogging on the computer while we're on vacation, but it probably won't post until we return. I'm sure you'll want to clear next Saturday night to get completely updated on all the Manna fun. Until then, happy sailing!