Connell Family Updates: October Week 1

October 3rd-October 9th

2010

This week (Monday-Thursday) was MUCH better weather wise... in fact we had a 50+ DEGREE drop over the course of just a few days. Last week it was 114 degrees... this week: in the 60s!

I am SO thankful!!

This weekend we went to Orange City, IA and WOW...

it was BY FAR the WORST travel experience of our lives!

Nothing Pete or I had previously experienced even came close!

If you don't want to hear about a bad and gross couple of travel days... please skip down to the next picture. :)

We flew out of Long Beach, and it was nice being so close to home, easy to park, easy to get through to our gate, but that was the extent of the good news for the day.

The flight out of Long Beach was a little delayed... maybe 15 minutes.

Most of the flight was ok.

It was a small plane... 12 or 15 rows, one seat on one side, two on the other.

As we started our descent into Salt Lake City though we hit some serious turbulence. We were coming in over the mountains... then it was as if we hit a secondary, separate storm system and all of a sudden, instead of the regular bad turbulence, the storm caught one wing of the plane and sent us falling through the air.

I took FULL advantage of the lovely little bags provided in the seat back pocket in front of me and had a heart to heart with God at the prospect of meeting Him sooner than I had expected. Just as we were closing in on the runway (maybe 2 stories up in the air) the pilot gunned the engines and we started back up in the air... back up into the storm.

The pilot told us that there was a plane on the runway so we had to wait.

We circled... (in the terrible storm), Pete joined in the barf bag fun... Emily grabbed hers and imitated (though not actually puking) and then not to be outdone, I had to 'borrow' the bag from the row behind us and make the most of it. It was awful.

We finally landed... I had tunnel vision, felt like I was about to faint, could hardly feel my legs or see straight, but because of our circling, we were now quite late and I had to take Emily and run to our next gate while Pete waited for the luggage.

Yes, CARRY Emily and RUN to our other gate (which of course was nowhere close!)

Need I remind you I was sick, and of course, pregnant too.

Well, I got to the gate at 7:37 and our flight was scheduled to leave at 7:45.

The jet bridge was attached and the gate agent was in the process of shutting the door. I ran up to her (the door was still OPEN) but she shut the door and simply said "I'm sorry, the flight is gone." I told her we had to get on the plane. She said "I'm sorry, you're late and the flight is gone, you may go over there and use the courtesy phones to call and reschedule for a flight tomorrow." I am usually an extremely patient person, but I told her that wouldn't work... we needed to get to the midwest TONIGHT. Could she get us into Minneapolis? Or Des Moines? Or even Chicago? Or anywhere tonight? She pointed at the phones. I started to cry. More people from our flight arrived and started to get upset. Eventually Pete came with the bags. We talked to the lady, realized we couldn't get out that night and started a long process of getting to Iowa. They put us up at a hotel, we had to go find a shuttle. We got there, it was an awful night. Emily kept asking when we were going to see Patches, Gpa & Gma patches. We ordered super expensive room service (with our $6 food vouchers, hmm.) I got sick again. Pete and I couldn't sleep on the sleep number beds. It was just bad. We got up early to wait for our shuttle. Went back to the airport, through security, then I spent some more time puking in the Salt Lake City bathrooms, onto another small plane and flew to Omaha (I of course had to test out these barf bags too), only to have a 3 hour car ride before we finally arrived in Orange City. I have never been so sick.

Our visit in Orange City was nice...

(Emily was spoiled with sweet early birthday presents!)

but short, and I was sick and nervous about the health of the baby.

I talked to my doctor on the phone. She gave me a list of about 5 different things to look for at a health foods store or pharmacy. There isn't a health foods store in Orange City and even though they have a great pharmacy, the pharmacy didn't have ANY of the items my doctor told me to get.