planes, trains and...

...just planes and trains. It was THAT kind of trip. I wanted to take one last trip before my maternity leave ends, so we packed up our family and headed to Albany, NY to visit my sister and her family.

We left Vancouver on a Sunday and headed down to Seattle. Our flight went from Seattle to Albany on the Tuesday. So, we had a couple of days to hang out with Jon and Caroline in Seattle. Or so we thought. The 2-day stay in Seattle ended up being a 3-day stay. We missed our plane on the Tuesday. It wasn't a cataclysmic series of catastrophic events. We missed our plane by 4 minutes because...I suppose it was because we just didn't manage our time well!

Neither Brian or I have ever missed a plane before so it was a big deal for us. I just couldn't believe that we had missed the plane! Brian had to keep telling me to let it go (I kept going through iterations of "if we only did this" or "if we only did that").

In the end, it wasn't a big deal. We just caught the same flight the next day. But it meant we had one less day to spend with my sister and her family. And the extra day we had in Seattle we spent at the airport re-arranging our flight and then at Target getting diapers, wipes, underwear, toiletries, etc. You see, "we" missed our flight but our luggage didn't.

We finally got to Albany already tired from going through the steps of air travel 2 days in a row with 2 small children. But we were happy to be visiting. Before we missed our flight, we had planned to take an overnight trip to New York City, but now that our trip was one day shorter, it just felt like that much more work to pack everyone up for a short, overnight trip to the city.

My sister finally convinced us to go by saying that she would keep Josh with her, so Brian and I only had to take Avery - a far less daunting task. So we did it. Brian had never been to NYC before, so we thought it would be a good introduction. And I haven't visited my girlfriend there in 12.5 years, so we were due for a visit. Plus, I really wanted to meet her new hubby!

Despite what I'm about to say, we had a FANTASTIC time. It was the REAL vacation in our vacation. Shabana and Brent were the perfect hosts and they graciously gave up their sleeping quarters for a night so that we could have a comfortable place to sleep with Avery (I'll do more on our visit in the next post).

Our first day there was great! We arrived from Albany to Penn Station in NYC in the morning and spent the day with Shabana. It all went well. The second day was a little more..."eventful". It was pouring down rain. Now, I come from Vancouver and we know our rain here in the Pacific Northwest. When you are prepared for it, it's all just environmental. But when you've only come prepared for cold and snow and have no rain gear to speak of, it's a different story.

And this wasn't the typical Vancouver drizzle that we get in the Pacific Northwest. This rain was torrential. And coming in sideways! We walked 5 blocks from Grand Central Station to the UN and we were drenched from the thighs down, carrying umbrellas! We thought we'd have time to dry off on a tour of the UN, but they wouldn't let us on the tour with Avery. Ugh. So we decided that we had seen quite a bit the day before and instead of traipsing around the city soaking wet, we would catch an earlier train home.

We had no problem switching our ticket to an earlier train and with plenty of time to catch the train, we headed to DSW to replace my soaked runners. Yeah, yeah, I hear all of your sighs already. We missed the train because of shopping. Unbelieveable.

It was not so bad - we just ended up back on our original train, which left a mere 2.5 hours later. We hung around close to Penn Station, not wanting to risk missing the last train of the evening. Well, for all that waiting, we got a delayed train! Our train was delayed 2 hours because all that rain (See?! I wasn't exaggerating when I said it was torrential!) had caused flooding in our rail corridor. Unbelieveable. We arrived back in Albany just before midnight. At least we made it.

There were no automobile glitches on the trip, thank goodness. But just when I thought our misadventures were over, we were headed on our flight back to Seattle and I started to feel queasy. My niece stayed home sick with a stomach flu the day before and it seemed that I would be the unlucky one to catch it.

As we took off on our flight from Detroit to Seattle, my stomach started to feel unsettled. Unfortunately, I was carrying a sleeping Avery in the ergo carrier and couldn't move her and risk waking her up. So, I toughed it out for about an hour and a half, until I couldn't take it anymore. Brian gave me a motion sickness bag and I went to the back of the plane and hurled. I managed to get it all in the bag despite carrying Avery in front of me. And Avery stayed sleeping! I was folding up the barf bag and that's when the second wave hit. I threw up all over the floor at the back of plane. It was gross. And still, Avery stayed sleeping! It was disgusting and the worst flight ever - even worse than being nauseous and pregnant on a 9 hour flight to Paris.

So those were our misadventures. Not quite planes, trains and automobiles. More like planes, trains and puking...