The Move: Days 0-1

This next series of posts will chronicle our move from Phoenix to Pittsburgh.

Let's start with Day 0. Read on and you'll understand why I call it Day 0. Paige and I had a 3:15pm direct flight booked from Phoenix to Pittsburgh arriving in Pittsburgh around 9pm. We purchased the direct flight because Paige is just too much to deal with in a layover situation. Plus, the last time we flew to Pittsburgh, she threw up mid-flight. To help prevent the flight sickness, I gave Paige a dose of Benedryl about 30-45 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart. This would give it time to kick in by the time we took off. About 5 minutes after I gave Paige the Benedryl, the airline announces that we have a maintenance delay and they will have more information in 15 minutes. We waited and waited. every once and awhile they would make an announcement to check back every 15 minutes in case there was an update. But there rarely were updates. About a 45-60 minutes after I had given Paige her Benedryl, she was asleep in her carseat.

Eventually, they announced the issue was with the radar and the flight would be delayed until 5pm. At this point I was a wreck. Here Paige was sleeping off her Benedryl and would be at risk to get sick on the plane. To make a story short, every hour or so they would update the delay and add on another hour or 2. They seemed pretty certain that this flight was going to happen as soon as that part came in. They gave us a little snack tray around 4pm and then issued food vouchers for $10 each around 6:30pm. The families flying with small children started gathering in the open space in front of the desk, so we started camping over there so Paige could at least play with the other kids. She was doing amazingly well.

My return flight after dropping Paige off with Grandma was to depart Pittsburgh at 7am. Once the flight was delayed to 10pm, I talked to the gate agent and told him if this flight was delayed one more time then I was going to miss my return flight. All he could say was that the flight was currently on schedule to depart at 10pm and he knew nothing else. Shortly after 9pm, they pushed the flight to 11pm and told us that they have been given permission to put us on alternate flights if we chose to do so. So I got in line...and waited. Then the display screen was turned off and they started pulling people from the waiting area and taking us to different counters. Our flight had been officially canceled.

While I was waiting to see what was going to happen next, a girl had come over and started playing with Paige and said she could watch her for a few if I needed to work with the gate agents. After sitting with everyone waiting on this flight for over 7 hours now, we were a sort of family. Finally, we managed our way down to the main ticketing counters and they re-booked our flight to be on Southwest for Friday at 2:40pm. My return flight also was changed to 7:50am on Saturday. By the time we got home, Paige didn't make it to bed until around 11:30pm. It was a very exhausting day for the 2 of us when nothing really happened at all. That's why I call it day 0!

Justin on the other hand, was very productive on Thursday getting his office cleaned up and getting more packing done at home. On Friday morning, it worked out that my flight was in the afternoon so that we could get the rental car, the moving truck and my car dropped off for shipping before my flight left! After Justin took Paige and I to the airport, he headed off to clean out our storage unit.

Paige did great on the Southwest flights on Friday. We had a layover in Chicago, because there were no direct flights available. Both on Thursday and Friday, she just went with the flow and had a great time watching and riding on the airplanes. Her favorite part was landing when she would clap and exclaim "I did it" as if she was responsible for landing the plane.

We arrived in Pittsburgh around 1am on Saturday morning (EST time). The wing of the airport our gate was in was deserted. Paige and I were the last ones off the plane and as we walked through the dark terminal, she would ask "where did everybody go?" and then answer herself "everybody go night-night".