Being positive and all...

I’m feeling more and more thankful that Jamie’s helping blog about this trip – look at her, already three posts and pictures. What a shiner! ;) Now it’s my turn…so I can also take part of the glory for the adventures we’re getting into – it’s incredible, I had kind of forgotten about all those crazy things that happen when I travel. – At least I’m kind of “used” to it and the Lord gives me the calm to handle it. Ha!

So here we are – in DC! And yes, that was NOT the plan, in case anyone was going to ask. We honestly were doing great after that last border crossing issue. We spent those two nights in San Antonio (one night at Fiesta and one night at Blanco to make everyone happy – they’re all so hospitable and COOL!!!), went to a POA gig, for me it was great seeing old friends and making new ones, and we then drove on to Houston to spend the night with some friends who SO sweetly drove us to the airport at a rather ungodly hour (especially seeing as it was a Sunday).

Things seemed to be going great, I even managed to get exit row seats (for my long legs), and then we land for our first stop over in Charlotte. We get to the gate and they offer to put us on an earlier flight to DC, which, again, seems to be just peachy, until we realize that the “earlier flight” had been waiting to take off since 9:30 in the morning – and it was 12:30 at the time. Yikes! (There was something wrong with the earlier plane, so they had to find another plane to fly people. Heh!) We were also thankful we still had our other tickets too, just in case that didn’t work out! The fun begins though when we’re about to start loading up – that’s when they announce that there’s a ground stop in DC – due to weather – no incoming or outgoing flights. Oh d-d-dear!

To make a long story short we sat in the airport lounge for 3 hours, with updates every half hour as to whether DC was open yet or not – and then they load us on to the plane at 3:30 – so we think “yes, we’ll make it to DC in time for our 6:20 flight out”, but no, we sat in the plane itself for almost 2 hours as they simply shipped us off to the plane to await DC airport opening (heh) seeing as they needed to use that gate for other flights. :(

Oh, and I forgot to tell you that poor Jamie got a tummy bug (and she’d like me to clarify that NO, she’s not PG – snicker) so she’s like puking the whole time. Poor baby!

The happy ending of the actual “plane” part is that we took off shortly after 5:00, though we land in DC just 10 minutes after our flight to Italy took off. – Sniff…

So then start the lines – we waited in one line for like 45 minutes only to then notice a small sign (posted out of the way, of course) that said we had to go to another converse to wait in another line if we were flying internationally. ARGH! So we go to that line, and OH MY GOD!!!! – That line was just ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly! I think it got to about half a mile long or more, it was that bad!

So we waited, and we waited, and we waited - then we took turns waiting, I don’t know about Jamie, but I got my Word time…and yes, 4 ½ hours later (meaning it’s almost midnight by then) we finally get to the front of the line and are confirmed on a flight out to Rome the next day! :( - So that would be a 24 hour delay!Thankfully the airline gave us a discount voucher (it wasn’t their fault the weather shut the DC airport down, but I must say, they handled the frustrated and even disgruntled passengers so well – I felt so sorry for them) so due to the sweet couple we stayed with in Houston helping us with a donation, we took the cheapest hotel possible (which was actually a lovely Hotel - turns out we got a $200+ hotel room for basically a third of the price), and after being discounted comes up to JUST the same amount they gave us (minus tithe). Is that awesome, or what?!

And yeah, we had a GOOOOOOD night’s sleep! Jesus loves us so much! I know things have been kind of challenging and even tough at times, and all that, but seriously, we’re in an awesome Hotel room, we each got our own double-bed, we showered, and showered, and showered, and then we slept, and slept, and slept with lots of super comfy pillows – had a lovely breakfast, and have just been relaxing and enjoying the comfort of it all!

So I’m positively positive about it all! ;) Just think, it’s the first really good night’s sleep we’ve had all week! (Hey, sleep is on the bottom of your “to-do list” when you’re visiting friends.) We had JUST the right amount needed, and not just that, but we’re feeling good and CLEAN – Jamie’s feeling much better, and I’m sure the Lord’s going to protect us the rest of the way.

Here, I took some pics of our Hotel room...we kind of didn’t think to take a picture of the long lines we stood in (yeah), but this is a positive post, so that’s probably for the best. ;)

Please pray for NO further complications. Hopefully next time we blog we’ll be doing so from Sardegna, after our flight, a short train ride and a five hour ferry crossing. So…to be continued.