#stranded

but wait! there's more!

as a general rule, bryan and i avoid winter travel like the plague. like the plague, i tell you!

but given the short window of availability into which we were able to fit our little romantic rendezvous, we took the risk anyway.

never. again.

so we were supposed to fly back to washington from utah on thursday morning. a storm was coming in wednesday night. we left the hotel in park city a night early, came down the canyon, and stayed with my grandma to avoid delays (and potential accidents) on I-80.

my uncle john drove us through the snow and sleet and rain and ice, and we arrived at the airport in plenty of time.

and by "plenty of time" i do mean plenty of time. like three days worth.

don't let that sign fool you or give you false hope: every. single. flight. was cancelled. 

and what happens when an airline tries to fit hundreds and hundreds of displaced people on flights that are already full of hundreds and hundreds of people during the busiest travel weekend of the year?

well, for the wheelers, it meant not getting booked out of utah until sunday afternoon.

now, you guys haven't forgotten about those three little people bryan and i left at home, right? 

well, my mom had already left washington early thursday morning. the plan was to cross paths in the seattle airport but a few hours from one another. and matto had been left in charge of the chillens.

now really, at this point, matto could probably take care of the children blindfolded, but he had no car and no food and no emotional preparation for an extra seventy-two hours of full-time *times three* (three-and-a-half if you fairly account for caleb) childcare.

i broke into hysterics. (yes, if you were there at the airport thursday afternoon, that was me). i had "rationally" decided that we needed to rent a car and drive (through two snow storms and several mountain passes) home. 

but as we were leaving the airport to go forward with this hare-brained scheme, bryan noticed that while no southwest flights were getting out, some other airlines had flights that were leaving. as a last-ditch effort, he called around to see the soonest something else might be available.

delta. friday night. first class. one seat left.

i took it.

and bryan came home on sunday.