Flying Solo

My brother Bryce got married at the end of December in California and Josh couldn't get off of work so I braved the trip across the country with the four kids by myself.  My motto was "it may not be pretty but we'll get there!" and actually it went pretty well.  Santa brought the kids these little suitcase/backpack rollers and they were a lifesaver.  The girls were playing "airplane" on Christmas and were pretty excited to use them.

Josh drove us from his parents house to Chicago Midway airport the day after Christmas.  He helped us check our bags and then I felt confident enough that we could make it through security without him.  The kids were very good, and Sadie kept me in line- I bent down while the security line had stopped to put my id back in my bag and when the line started moving again she said, "Mom, you need to keep moving!!"

I didn't quite think through how late at night our flight was- we didn't get in to LAX until after midnight our time, and with a little wait and confusion about where Aaron's carseat was it was pretty late when we got to my parents house, of course with 9 o clock church the next morning!  But somehow we made it not too worse for the wear.  Aaron slept pretty much the whole time, which was great except then when we got home he was awake and I was exhausted.  The other hard part was that we don't all fit on a row anymore, so I sat with Aaron on one side while the big kids sat across from me.  One of the stewardesses was really helpful with them, Shane wasn't as helpful as I had hoped, poor guy was still not feeling great.

The flight back home went even better than the way there, and when we got off a guy with one little girl asked if that was my first time flying with 4 and I said it was our return trip, and he told me how well they all did and that he felt like everyone should have been applauding me as I got off the plane- ha!  I secretly felt like that too- we did it!