I'll be home for Christmas...

Jeff and I felt we had a very blogworthy story for you on how we made it to Texas on Christmas day. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy the ride from afar (which will be much more than we did living it).

So we had a lovely Christmas Eve service at 7pm Wednesday. Were considering canceling due to weather, but went ahead. Micah was rambunctious, as expected, but Jeff invited all the children to the front to hear the Christmas story. Micah ran down the aisle to sit with his daddy and other kids on the steps--adorable. As Jeff starts to read, Micah bows his head and clasps his hands and says, "praying." Apparently no one else got the memo, so Micah leans over and gets in another little boy's face and says, "praying, praying" as if to say, "don't you know what to do?" Who's the preacher's kid here? At the end, I loved holding a candle high with him as we sang Silent Night. One of my favorite moments of every Christmas, and it was so special to share it with him, as hyper and squirmy as he was.

So we went back home in the slush, put Micah to bed, and continued to pack to prepare for our trip in the morning. Jeff went to sleep around midnight and I followed suit an hour later. Our alarms went of at 3:30am and we looked outside and saw a fresh inch of snow on the ground, but it wasn't snowing. All the while, we were checking online to see if our 5:40 am flight from Bellingham was cancelled and it wasn't. So, our friend Matt picked us up at 4:15 to take us to the airport as scheduled. (Thanks, Matt!) But, by this time, snow was falling fast and we still expected to be delayed. We checked in at Bellingham, went through security, and watched the snow continue to fall as we waited. It was actually fun to see them sweep the front windows of the plane with big brooms (can you tell it's a small airport?) At 5:30, a gate agent reassured us that the flight would still depart, but a few minutes late while they cleared snow and de-iced. At 5:40, another agent declared that the flight will in fact, be delayed. We knew at that point we would miss our Seattle-Dallas flight. So, we went back to the check-in desk (out of security) to check out our options and re-booked on a flight for the next day. The agent went out to the plane to get us our luggage. Matt came and picked us up from the airport to bring us home and we made the disappointing phone calls to our parents that we would be arriving a day and a half late. (This meant that we would miss taking scheduled pictures with Micah and his cousins and the big Christmas gathering with Jeff's extended family, not to mention that everything else we had planned would have to be rescheduled.)

We got home, brought all the luggage back in (3 suitcases + 1 car seat), turned the heat back on, and made some tea. Jeff wondered if there was any way that we might be able to still pull this off, so he looked on line and found some decent tickets out of Seattle at 2:40 pm, a time that we might be able to drive to make. We realized we would have to leave immediately, so we packed some snacks, reloaded the car, turned the heat off, took off the tire chains (since we would be driving on the highway) and set off in the snowstorm by about 7:30 am. Micah wasn't too thrilled about getting back in the car. I didn't blame him.

What is usually an hour-and-a-half drive took two and a half hours to Seattle. There were periods of snow, rain, slush, or all of the above. Thankfully, Micah slept peacefully the whole drive, since he was woken at 4:30. It was scary, but not the whole time. I found myself pushing my imaginary passenger-side brake many times. Changing lanes was the most treacherous. I started praying harder when we passed a few cars stuck in the side ditch.

Thank God, we made it safely to the airport. When we drove through the airport and read the signs that the terminal parking lot was full, we confidently left to park in an off-site lot with shuttle service. We drove up and down International Boulevard looking for ANYWHERE to park, only to be met with signs in front of every lot (even every hotel that has a shuttle and parking lot) that read "Lot Full" or "Reservations Only" We spent TWO AND A HALF HOURS total driving around looking for a place, any place. We even stopped at one place that wouldn' t park our car because we didnt' have four-wheel drive. They wouldn't even consider parking anyone without it because the lot itself was so treacherous and covered with slushy snow and deep ruts.

So, we went back to the airport to check one more time or maybe catch someone leaving. Nada. People were so desperate to park that there were dozens of illegally parked vehicles in fire zones, the ends of rows, even half up on sidewalk curbs. Never would we have dreamed that parking (not weather conditions or travel volume!) would be our biggest obstacle to making the trip!

At this point, we decided to look further north and further south, up and down International Boulevard, but to no avail. As (what we thought was) a last resort, we called our friend Deborah whose parents live a few minutes away from the airport, to see if we could park our car in front of her house, leave the keys in the secure mailbox, and call a taxi. No one was at home then, because they were actually out with family celebrating Christmas. I called information to get some taxi companies, but kept getting the same one. So, we called Jeff's dad (in Texas) who looked up about 10 numbers online for Seattle taxis. Not until we called the 10th number did we actually speak to a human being. They assured us that they could pick us up in 25 minutes --already cutting it close to make our flight-- and call to confirm. So, we let Micah out to play in the snow, and got the car seat ready to install in the taxi. 30 minutes later, the taxi had neither called nor arrived, so we decided to leave. (Thanks anyway, Deborah!) Our plan was to park the car in the hourly airport terminal parking, as opposed to the daily lot, and hope that our friends Katie & Angie (who live in Seattle) wouldn't mind picking up the car later. We tried to simply drive off, but were stuck in the slushy snow and couldn't make it over the slight hill to get out of the cul-de-sac. Jeff got out to push the car, but I kept spewing slush at him as I revved the engine and spun the tires. Jeff tried to put the chains on the tires, but they were too deep in the slush. We had brought some homemade bread in a tin (thanks, Houtsmas!) so I dumped out the bread into our food bag and Jeff scooped snow out with the loaf tin.

to be continued...