Home Safe

We got in at around 7:30 eastern time tonight, after a long day of travel that started at 9:15 mountain time, when we said goodbye to the wonderful house we called home for our time in Vail. The day’s travels included a treacherous two hour drive to down the Vail Pass into Denver (complete with numerous trucks stopped in the middle of the interstate lanes to strap on their chains or otherwise cope with the icy conditions), curbside check in at the airport, a bus ride back to the airport from the rental car return, lunch at the airport, snacks on the three hour plane ride, a too-long-wait for dinner at a Tampa pizza place, and the kids tucked into their own beds by 9:30 or so. A well meaning fellow traveler naively but sweetly asked, “is this the little one’s first plane flight?” Bwaahahaha. No, he’s a seasoned traveler! The kids were great, maybe one meltdown the whole time. I gotta say, too, that Mike and I really have the whole travel with two-kids-and-two-car-seats thing down pat. It was hard not to feel just a wee bit smug as others seemed to really struggle with getting through security, and we managed to do the whole thing — four pairs of shoes, two computers, two car seats, and three carry ons — smoothly and easily. The biggest credit has to go to my Ergo Baby Carrier, which makes it so much easier to keep Nate contained and happy while giving us all a level of mobility we would not have if we were saddled with a stroller on top of everything else. That, and we’ve done it more than a few times now and have our system down.

We finally figured out the last piece of the puzzle, by the way: our drop off was smooth, since we split up and I handled gate-checking the bags with the kiddos while Mike parked the car. But arrival with all.those.bags. has always been a difficult juggling act. Finally, I came up with the easy solution of investing five bucks in the services of a skycap to get the bags from the baggage claim carousel to the curb. Mike took Alex and his car seat to pick up the car, while Nate (on my back) and I picked up the bags and enlisted said skycap. Once the bags were on the curb, I changed Nate’s diaper, had his car seat out of the carry bag and ready to go, and even changed my shoes by the time Mike and Alex pulled up. Maximum efficiency!