New York or Bust

Bust.

I had hoped that today I would be able to share beautiful pictures of NYC decorated for Christmas. However, my stomach had other plans. The Friday after Thanksgiving, Judd and I had planned to take the train up to NYC for the weekend leaving Charlotte with my parents. Around 2:30 am I woke up with a horrible stomach bug that lasted the entire day. So, after much begging we got our Hilton Honors points back and Amtrak fare refunded. We were bummed to say the least. But, it did give us more time with my family and Judd got to head up to Deer Camp with our brother-in-law, Andrew.

We were going to fly out of PA on Sunday originally, but with the new change of plans, we decided it might be a good idea to fly out on Saturday instead in order to beat the crowds. We got to the Harrisburg airport around 3:15 pm on Saturday hoping to get on the 4:05 pm flight. When we got there we saw that it was delayed until 5. When we checked our bags, the Delta rep. said that we would be lucky if we got on the plane. The weather was bad in Atlanta and the planes had weight restrictions. This was not good news. This meant that they would leave some seats empty because they had to load more fuel. So, after much debate and frantic flight research, we decided to hop in the car and drive to Baltimore where there would be better flight options. Now, Charlotte had not taken any sort of afternoon nap, so I was starting to get really worried about how this 1.5 hour drive to Baltimore was going to go.

We made it to BWI around 6:00 pm, said goodbye to my parents, and headed inside to check-in. The flight had been delayed until 8 pm, but there was a good chance we would get on. We got a sandwich and fed Charlotte her dinner. She ended up sleeping about an hour of the drive to BWI and was in a pretty good mood. We got our boarding passes and noticed that they were first class! We boarded the plane around 8 pm, but didn't actually take off until 8:30. I gave Charlotte her bottle then, she went to sleep, and Judd and I kicked back and "enjoyed" the 2 hour extremely turbulent flight. We landed, got the bags & cars, fought traffic, and ended up home around 12:15 am.

Charlotte was a dream the entire time. She had been in the car, stroller, or on the plane for 10 hours. I don't think she cried once. Judd and I are excited to think that we may have a new travel buddy :)

We are grateful to my parents who took an entire evening to drive us to BWI to catch the plane. Non-rev traveling is wonderful at times, but the weekend after Thanksgiving we are learning can be stressful. We have already booked actual tickets to fly home after Christmas.