I spent the day yesterday in the Atlanta airport. With three children.
After six days of pretty much camping out at the mostly empty new house in the Atlanta burbs we left yesterday morning for the airport. What with needing to stop and get gas, and trying to find a station with gas (a few are out of gas periodically down south) and then getting through the morning traffic, we arrived at the airport 65 minutes before our flight.
Then we waited in a 30 minute line at the Air Tran counter. You MUST wait in this crazy long line if you have luggage to check, and I needed (was required) to check my big rolly suitcase and the girls' two car seats. At the counter, 30 minutes later, they informed me that I was required to check my luggage 45 minutes before the flight and I had missed the cut off.
As I stood there with three squirming, climbing, wall-bouncing children, they came up with this thrilling solution: We got to spend another five hours at the airport waiting for the next flight to the Quad Cities!! Wheee! And they even did me the favor of confirming my seats on the next flight, rather than forcing me to fly standby (Can you imagine? Standby? Are you crazy?).
We survived. We bought overpriced Dora workbooks and SpongeBob crap and I read countless books, until hoarse, and then I just let them roam around the terminal like Tom Hanks, provided I could see them and they weren't touching anyone else.
They were filthy and restless and begging me and anyone else they could find for ice cream since we were sitting near a dratted Ben and Jerry's whose sign actually depicts an ice cream cone and all children can instantly recognize the international language of ice cream. But Quin has dairy issues and they didn't have soy or rice ice cream so I said no. I only had one spare diaper per kid and couldn't afford the kind of blow out the follows Quin ingesting dangerous foods.
So, if you saw what appeared to be homeless children in the Atlanta Airport yesterday, they were mine.
2 comments:
Such fun! I give you a lot of credit. Five hours seems as though it would be an eternity.... there should be some sort of award appropriate for such a feat.
After 5 hours in the airport, I would have been the one bouncing off the walls while my kids all dozed in the chairs out of utter boredom. I never judge in an airport, you just never know.
We (shamefully) do Starbucks for a treat where my dairy free child can get a decaf soy latte while the others have decaf frappacinos. And I'll take just about anything in the vente size. In the end were all happy, just a little bit broke.
Welcome home.
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