Alrighty then...I got my notebook out, my photo album up in another window, and I don't have Reaggers or Bub today. Squizzle is still sleeping (hallelujah!) and Peff is glued to the Lego Batman controls. So settle in for a nice long post.
Last Tuesday, I got done with class at 8:30, took the train to West Jordan and had Aunt M and Uncle J bring me home. The house was mostly picked up, but we still had to get everybody packed and all the last minute details worked out. By the time the kids were in bed and the Boss and I could get to work it was nearly 10. We finished packing at about 1 A.M, then had to print off the "permission to treat" forms, schedules, maps and phone numbers for who would have the kids and when.
It is at this point that I will once again give credit and thanks to those brave souls who were willing to increase their usual workload by five so that the Boss and I could do this. The Boss's sister, Aunt J and her husband Uncle D get thanks and love for accepting the difficult task of getting the kids to school and back each day, and housing them from Wednesday to Friday and then again Sunday night until we got home.
Aunt M and Aunt Beak took the kids for the weekend, in spite of the fact that it was Beak's anniversary on Sunday. If I had known that, I would have found alternative lodgings for my brood. Coming from a man who once bought a toilet snake for his anniversary and spent the day trying to remove the comb and two hot wheels cars that Peff had flushed down the toilet, I can say that Beak deserved better for her anniversary than keeping Destroying Angels from burning her house to the snowline.
While I'm on the subject, thanks to Uncles C and J for fixing a home repair problem while we were gone that had been bugging me for a while. You guys rock.
Also, My mother and Uncle T spent time with Squizzle and Peff on Friday and for that I thank them also. The Boss's Mother went with Haggis (AKA the Eldest) to her young women's "new beginnings night", while my Mom took Moe to her mother-daughter activity on Friday, and to numerous family members were in attendance at Haggis's last basketball game on Wednesday. Thank you all.
For a reward, each of the previously mentioned Aunts will receive from the Cozumel Fairy a bottle of real Vanilla extract and a bracelet. All the Uncles will receive a copy of my two favorite photos from the trip(get your minds out of the gutter! It ain't what you're thinking!...Sort of).
Back to the trip. We finally got to bed at about two or two thirty and since we had an eight A.M. flight, we had to be at the airport no later than six. So it was back up at five, marched the kids to the van and filled it with enough bags to make Paris Hilton blush (or whatever it is she does if she ever feels shame). We said family prayer and then dumped the kids on Aunt J while Uncle D took us to the airport.
We cleared security much faster than anticipated although part of that was due to the fact that I had to take my belt off. This meant they really didn't need a metal detector or even one of those fancy "strip search" machines, 'cause my drawers about fell off and they could have done a visual.
****Editor;s Note
I can think of so many airport security jokes right here that they have all just lodged together into one giant traffic jam of thoughts best left unspoken. So feel free to invent your own and insert it here.
****
In spite of the fairly dense (for Salt Lake anyway) fog, our plane to Denver left pretty close to on time. Thanks to on-line early check in, we had a boarding number in the twenties so we could pretty much pick where we wanted to sit. I thought it would be nice to have more leg room by sitting up front, but all it really meant was no table tray and a nasty sense of claustrophobia from staring at a wall for the whole trip. The flight was smooth and the landing smoother. We had an hour to kill in Enver (still can't find a "d" in that city)so we grabbed a bite to eat (Mmmm...Airport Nachos for breakfast!) and made fun of the weirdos who inevitably inhabit Airport Terminal lobbies.
We saw the New Mexico Lobos basketball team on their way to play at Air Force and if I had known then all the nice things their coach was going to say about my BYU team, I'd have returned the favor for old JT. Jerks.
One other thing I noticed about the Denver Airport...it is in the middle of NOWHERE! I've seen more crowded neighborhoods in the heart of the Bonneville Salt Flats. It has to be a two hour drive from the airport to anywhere in Colorado worth visiting. Not that we had to go anywhere there, I'm just sayin'...
For some reason that I'm still trying to figure out, I picked the same seat for the flight from Denver to Houston. Never again.
By the time we landed at Hobby Airport, I had a cramp in my ribcage (ever had one of those? Avoid it if at all possible) from squeezing and twisting my frame away from the wall. I was already not looking forward to flying home.
The good news was that it was pretty clear most of the way, and even with my lousy eyes, I got to see some pretty cool geography. Thanks to the cramped conditions and the newness of flying again (it has been about ten years since I flew anywhere), I left my camera in my bag and didn't get any pictures.
Houston was flat and cool and much less humid than I expected. I could learn to dig Houston in February. May through September would probably kill me, but February is very nice. The Boss was thankful she had worn a jacket.
We got our luggage and then due to the size of our group we had to wait for about forty minutes to get on the hotel shuttle. It was worth it though when the driver got out and looked like he could have been Ossie Davis's twin (Another Joe Vs Volcano reference). I wanted to tell him I was shopping for clothes or better yet, that we were "off to the Pierre" but I am one hundred percent certain he would have had no idea what I was talking about. Oh well. I thought it was a good omen anyway.
We got to our hotel and found that they had lost our reservations. Something to do with them not completing a name change the way our travel agent had requested. All they had left was a room with twin beds and a "spectacular" view of the airport runway. I suppose it was better than sleeping in a broom closet but for a hotel chain with such a hoity-toity reputation, I was expecting a LOT more.
I won't name names, but we'll say that if and when a certain famous (notorious?) daughter of the founder takes over, I imagine things will get a lot worse. The shower wasn't working quite right, the shower curtains were too short to keep water from flooding the bathroom floor, and from the tile damage it had been that way for a while. The TV was a high def flat screen, but it looked like someone had let their cat use it as a scratching post. Had we been spending our vacation there...we wouldn't have. Motel 6 can and does do better. But it was free so I mostly kept my mouth shut. Thank heaven that this is the only complaining I have to do about the whole week. One night in a mediocre hotel room is far from the worst thing that's happened to us in the last few years.
That night, we had a buffet style kick off dinner with the obligatory open bar. In retrospect I have to ask, is drinking the only form of fun "adults" are looking for while on vacation? No wonder people think you can't get a drink in Utah.
There was plenty of Coke and Sprite for us teetotalers and more than plenty of food. There was a Tex-Mex version of a Cesar salad that had the spiciest dressing I've ever tasted. The Boss and I had a fun time watching as unsuspecting people would sit down, try a bite of salad, chew for a moment and then have flames shoot out their ears. It happened over and over again. Very funny.
There were chicken enchiladas, rice, beans, and both steak and chicken fajita fixin's. None of it was even close to as spicey as the salad dressing. Cake and cookies rounded out the menu.
After dinner, they had a quick run through of what would be happening in the morning, when to be ready to board the bus, and what we'd need to do to get on the boat. Then they went around the room and had each winner introduce themselves, where they were from and tell their most funny/ memorable McDonald's moment.
The Boss scored some of the best laughs of the night when she told the group about how we met at McD's sixteen years ago when she was a swing manager and I joined as crew fresh off my mission. Now we were married, had five kids, and she was still the Boss (everyone laughed, but no one found this funnier than me). We also got big cheers when it was discovered that this was our first trip without kids since Haggis was born almost thirteen years ago. More than one person thought that this made us more deserving to go than the Boss's sales success.
We had to be in the hotel lobby and ready to leave by 10:30 and knowing we'd want breakfast (for which we had free coupons or as Texans call 'em... "cup'ns") we decided to turn in early and in spite of the lullaby of landing aircraft, we were asleep by 10 P.M.
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