Unleash the Beast

Today was travel day.  Up at 830am this morning from our palatial estates at Holiday Inn Renton, we scrambled like mad to make it to the 930 shuttle to SeaTac.   We made the last call for the shuttle and this would be a recurring theme today ... yes not much of a surprise to most of you who know our family.

We got to the airport nice and early and breezed thru security while the rest of the Buzzas/Keatings waited in a rather large line to do the same.   So, round 1 to the Douglases!  (Everything's a game with us don't you know.)

Once everyone got thru we headed down to our gate.  Actually it was more like sauntering.  We had about an hour to takeoff, so plenty of time right?   We got to the gate and found out that food was available for purchase on the flight.  Well airplane food isn't known for its quality or its low prices and with a 5 hour flight ahead of us we needed some food, so I headed back up to Quiznos where I found David inline with his kids.  Still had 40 minutes until take-off.  Well they didn't take my order until 30 minutes before takeoff and then the emails from Tawny started coming fast and furious.

"You guys close?" "Hurry please." "They just issued last call."  "Um the plane is gonna take off without you."  The Quiznos did their best to go as slow as possible and as soon as I got the food I sprinted to the gate, where we just made it on in time.   There were 3 people behind us so lots of time right?

The flight went pretty good, although the Buzzas and Keatings were scattered around the plane (I think they heard that they're troublemakers so they had to keep 'em apart) while the 5 Douglases were all in a row, and the 6th & 7th in our row just happened to be Becky and Declan.  Normally when you sit next to a baby on a plane you cringe, but not with our nephew.  He was awesome on the plane.  A little giggling, a little sleeping and overall super content the whole flight ... if he just could teach something to his cousin.

Tawny & I have a nickname for Abigail that we use affectionately ... The Beast.   For the most part she is super cute and super sweet, but there are times when The Beast comes out and look out!   This flight was no different.  She was awesome for a good 3 and a half hours but the last hour we were checking to see if there was any room in the overhead compartments.  Just kidding.  Maybe.

We made it to Newark with lots of time to spare before our next flight and then sat on the runway and ate up all that time so that we had just enough time to walk briskly to the gate for our next flight.  Along the way, Papa Bear managed to "steal" the pilot's luggage (honest mistake of grabbing the wrong bag but the pilot was none too happy).

Newark to Orlando was a much quicker flight and fairly non-eventful.  The Beast stayed hidden from what I could see and we got to Orlando all in one piece with all our luggage, well except for one of Shane's suitcases which made a detour to New Orleans.   I guess it's a good thing they know where it is, but how it went there, I'm not too sure.  Plus the car rental company wanted to charge Shane an extra $10/day to be able to drive the car, but that's a story for another day.

We then made our way to our rental house in Kissimee where all 15 of us are staying and took a little while to get settled.  The kids were all sleeping by 2:45/3am EST and the adults are slowly starting to nod off.  Glad that's over, cause the real fun starts tomorrow!

PS. I know we joke about Abby being the beast but she's just so darn cute most of the time, so when it turns it's quite the contrast.  I must have got a dozen hugs and kisses from her today always accompanied by "I love you Daddy", how can you get mad with that?