Delayed Flights and First Class Seats

How many crazy travel stories do I need before I'm even 26!?! sheesh! Well, this one is just....it's just so Alabama.

Little Belle and I were scheduled to leave Alabama on Wednesday afternoon. Sean had to fly, so we had a friend ready to take us in our car, so she could just drop it back off and not have to use her gas, or worry about carseat or anything. Perfect! Except....

On the way to the (teeniest tiniest) airport in our little town, the sky FELL OUT! I mean...I literally had to stop the car it was so bad. I'm used to driving in the rain. I'm used to storms. But this was intense!! I thought we may actually get swept off the road for a minute. Anyway, we got there, waited out the massive downpour in the car (sort of...except, it never really stopped), and then went inside to discover the flights were all going to be delayed. All four of them. Yes, the teeny tiny airport only has 4 flights a day. HAH! So I got a new itinerary for the next morning at 5am. yuck.

Got home. Left the bags at the door. Went to bed early. Woke up at 3:30am to get ready. JUST as I was about to wake up the baby to get her in the car, Delta calls and says my flight has been delayed again. Well. whew. I wasn't too excited about leaving so early. Except....Sean could take us then, and not later, so I was a little worried about getting that all worked out. I called Delta, and apparently I was one of 139820189473928 people calling, because I was on hold for over an hour, and online trying to figure it out on my own, when I finally just got something booked (free), and decided to go to bed. That "something" happened to have an extra stop on top of our Atlanta connection. Which was fine by me because......we were somehow automatically upgraded to platinum status (or something cool like that), and had First Class seats on the two long flights! WOO! I'm not complaining. The only thing is they weren't even for that day, but the next!

So, after all of that, instead of leaving on Wednesday, and having one stop in Atlanta, we left on Friday with two stops, but First Class seats, and flying during the day instead of into the night. And my friend was even available to take us again :) Crazy Alabama weather! Good thing we were flexible, and weren't in any kind of hurry (AND I had already planned a long trip, so we weren't cutting off too much valuable time).

If you are wondering how flying first class with a toddler went......it.was.awesome. If I could do it every time I SO would. She sat on the arm rest, "walked" around in front of me, and sat NEXT to me on my seat. We were served a hot meal, had plenty of attention, and SO much space. *sigh* It was awesome. That will likely never happen again, so I am super thankful we got to experience that together.

Annabelle is a flying champ wherever we sit, but that was a fun experience for this pregnant mama! ;) Thank God, on the flight home, she slept around 2 hours of the 4 1/2 hour flight! That helped a toooooon. The rest of the time she didn't have a single tantrum, and really did amazing. Great traveler!

During our layovers, she ran around the airports, and found lots of fun things to do ;) I just followed her around with the stroller and bags. I didn't mind. We both needed to stretch our legs, and I liked giving her an hour of freedom where she wasn't restricted by walls and seats and aisles. She enjoyed it too.
After a crazy first two days of delays, we were blessed with two great travel days!