01-06-2007
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#39 (permalink) |
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aņejo
 Join Date: Apr 2001
Posts: 11,229
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Wow, thank you everyone, I had no idea I'd be missed or so warmly welcomed back. I'm feeling the love, ya'll! And thanks for the compliments on my avatar, that was taken on the ship by John.
My sister had her baby girl while we were away, so I was busy today meeting my new baby niece, Jayden. I'll post the first day now, hopefully get some more done later, but I have to step out to a Grease party at my neighbours (that's Grease the movie, collective minds out of the gutter  ) so I have to go get all "Grease'd" up.Here goes: We originally planned our flight time so that we could just drive down to Seattle that morning. We saved about $1000 by flying out of Seattle (a 2 1/2 hour drive) over Vancouver (a 40 minute drive). Later we figured out that parking at the airport for almost three weeks would cost the same as staying the night before at the Marriott with unlimited parking and airport shuttle, so we decided to go down the day before - which left time for some shoe shopping (remember, I'm the Imelda Marcos of the family).  We arrived at our hotel around 5pm and all the power in the surrounding area was out and had been for a few days to a week, thus the hotel was full and almost out of food! We were stuck with some burgers for dinner. Then we retired to the room for a movie and early bedtime. We woke around 7, and decided to catch the 8:30 shuttle. Our flight was at 11:45, but we didn't know what to expect with security, etc. Turns out we had nothing to worry about. sidebar: there were no xmas trees or menorah or signs of the sweet baby jesus in Seatac.  We had etickets, so a quick check-in and then we discover one of our suitcases is overweight...by 4.5 pounds. Holy sheep doo doo, they wouldn't let it slide. She asks me to open it and take some stuff out and put it in another case, I tried to explain in whispered voice that it was full of xmas presents the children didn't know about, "you know, from SANTA" wink-wink, nudge-nudge..."that'll be $25 for the overweight charge." What a b..., I didn't say that loud enough for her to hear me, but John wide-eyed me. Bags checked, we headed for security checkpoint. I set off alarms when I walked through the detector... John whispered to me "it's a bee-otch detector, they found you out."  hardy har har. I took off some jewellry, emptied out some pocket coins...it went off again. John gives me a knowing smile.  Finally it's determined that it is my lipgloss...we've been through this, I don't leave home without it. They let me keep it though. Lucky for them. Off we go to hurry up and wait for our flight. Seatac is actually a very nice airport. We grabbed a Starbucks after an argument with my pre-teen about why she couldn't have a frappaccino (caffiene) and then sat down to admire the scenery.  There was this gigantic mobile hanging from the roof, which was really neat. Made up of fish and many other things.   Checked our flight, which was ontime.  And we proceeded to wait. While we waited we were serenaded with Christmas carols by these talented folks, it was quite nice:  Finally flight time came, and they were offering people $350 to step aside from the overbooked flight and take the next one. Hmm...$350 x 4....naahh. We're already arriving in Orlando at around 11pm. Soon we were boarding the plane, right to the back of the bus for us. This plane was so tiny is was awful. It was an MD80, I never want to fly in one of those again. Old and small. No fun. The kids were absolutely terrific on the 4 hour flight to DFW. They never complained, just played their nintendos and listened to their iPods, read their books/magazines, etc. I caught a good pic of Mount St. Helens which erupted a lot of years ago (I think I was about 10 when that happened)  Later on in the flight I took some other photos, but I had no idea exactly what I was seeing, it just looked neat. Water? Snow? I dunno.   This one looks like divided farmland:  and some other photos from the air:   We landed at DFW without a hitch, and went to find our next flight gate. This place is huge! We had something to eat, then waited for our flight...which was delayed 10 minutes. Then another 10. Then another 20. Finally, about an hour past schedule we board the plane for the leg to Orlando. They changed our seat assignment and interestingly enough I end up in a 3-seat row with two kids, while John has an aisle seat off somewhere else...hmm...coincidence? I think not. 3 uneventful hours later we land. Yahoo! We grab a cab to our first hotel, the Best Western Universal Inn, across the street from Universal ORlando. To bed about 1am (but that's only 10pm our time) and we'd head to Universal in the morning. Not too interesting yet, but I'm sure it'll get better. Maybe. |
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01-06-2007
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#43 (permalink) | |
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aņejo
Join Date: Apr 2001
Posts: 11,229
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Quote:
 Miss you guys too! |
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