Day 1, June 25, 2017, Sunday
So today is the day…..sort of.
Since we fly out of Columbus usually, and it’s a 2 ½ hour drive away, we typically head down the day before and stay with my sister who lives there.
We told Amanda we wouldn’t be coming till the evening though, as we needed to spend some extra family time with Skip.
At some point this day or the day before (memories are blurred that weekend. LOL), Skip asked us when we were coming home. Yes…that’s right, he never asked us how long we would be going till right before we were leaving. Hahahaha. And really if he had, he would have said I never told him anyways. I told him we would be flying home July 10th. He did the math in his head….You are going to be gone for Half a Month! Yes we are! For some reason this time he seemed like he was going to miss us more than usual. I mean I am sure he always misses us, but he is usually so busy that the time just flies. This time was different and he did fuss a bit about how he was going to be so lonely.
I finished up the packing of last minute things and started to load the car in the afternoon. This is when the comedy show started. Seriously, if anyone was filming this, I am sure it would provide many people with lots of laughs. I weighed the suitcases before putting them in the trunk and they were all way under…Hmmm. How did that happen? Well let’s pull them back out and condense them down to 3 then. I had to really stuff things here and there to make it fit, but fit it did. Weighed again….still under. OMG…I was weighing in KG’s instead of pounds. Ok, rearrange again now that some are overweight. I had them sprawled out in the garage and I was moving things all over the place. Finally I got them all underweight, with some on the border. I weighed with 2 scales and I figured I would have Amanda weigh with hers too and if needed, I would throw something in my carryon. I was trying to keep those semi-light so I could add water bottles in them later to take to the port.
I totally worked up a sweat doing that! But I was able to now have 3 checked bags instead of 4. One bag was mainly Fish Extender Gifts, so that would empty out and even though we would be getting some in return, I highly doubted that the gifts for one kid would take up the whole suitcase. (I was almost wrong there. LOL).
Ok, we are packed and ready to go. Since I had misplaced my license and debit card on my trip in Feb., I showed Claire that I had them and where they were so there would be no issues later. We also pulled out our passports and opened them up to show each other that we had the correct passport and then to show we put them back in our bags which then went in the car.
We said goodbye to Skip and then headed off to my sister’s house. I listened to an audio book and Claire had her headphones on the whole time….probably listening to Harry Styles.
We made our traditional bathroom stop at McDonalds about half way down and got something to drink and went on. Skip called right as we were pulling in to see if we made it yet. Um no…only half way so far!
We arrived at my sister’s condo then and brought our suitcases in the house for safekeeping. She had made tacos for dinner so soon we were sitting down to have a nice meal and chat about our upcoming trip. Amanda also was telling us about her weekend with her friends and it was just a nice evening.
My plan had been to drive to the airport and leave our car in the parking lot while gone. Our return flight came in at 4:10 and Amanda works till 5 and she said she really couldn’t take the time off to get us. Skip had told me to ask again, but I told him I was not going to keep bothering her about it.
We discussed what time we should leave and I mentioned that I worried about the outside check in desk not being open that early, and if it wasn’t then we were going to have to haul our bags on the shuttle from the parking lot because I was not allowing Claire to sit with them at the terminal and wait for me at 4 in the morning.
I had tried to dig around to see what time it opened but nothing returned anything that confirmed it one way or another.
Amanda asked what time our return flight was again and I told her and she said she may be able to come get me after all. I told her if she was late, that would even be fine. It would make things easier for drop off for sure that early in the morning….and of course save me some parking money as well.
After that, we headed outside and walked around her complex for a little bit and talked and worked off our taco dinner. Then we needed to get to bed. I knew I would have issues sleeping and we would be up super early, but I figured at least if I got a little rest, it would help immensely.
And I was right! We both tossed and turned quite a bit, though at one point Claire was snoring and very loudly! Of course she told me the next day she never slept a wink. I should have recorded her snores! Even though it was not the best night’s sleep, I did get some and it kept me going the next day!