A Whole Mess O' Stress

Well, here we are in Iowa for the Christmas holidays.

Our trip here was less than pleasant. Lydia was the least of our worries and was a complete angel (answered prayers!). The airplane side of things wasn't so smooth. The "fun" began while still in Prague. We were flying to Munich and the plane we would be flying on was late arriving from Munich due to weather. We finally boarded the plane and were delayed another 20 minutes because on the weather returning to Munich. With only a 1 hour connection time we knew we were in bad shape. We arrived in Munich and missed our plane to the States by about 15 minutes! Talk about filling heartsick!!! Since the next plane to the States wouldn't be for another 24 hours, we decided to fly that night to Frankfurt so we could fly out first thing in the morning of the 23rd. We spent the night in a hotel near the airport, and awoke the next morning with only the clothes on our back. Of course, our baggage didn't make it to Frankfurt and we had to leave for the States without it. On the flight to America, Lydia was so well behaved the flight attendants were amazed at her. We got to Chicago and to make a long story short, Lydia and I had to leave on the flight to Sioux Falls without Brandon because there weren't enought seats on the plane. Even a plea from the United Airlines supervisor for a volunteer to give their seat to Brandon in exchange for a free round trip came and went with no takers. By this time Lydia's patience was wearing thin and Mommy was a bit emotionally unstable. Brandon arrived a few hours later, with time to shower and 5 minutes to spare before the party began.

We went to our first Christmas party with our same clothing. I was able to borrow a shirt from my generous sisters. Lydia didn't even make it to the party. I put her down for a late nap after we arrived at 4:00 pm. Since she had been awake for approximately 18 hours at this point she was in no emotional state for partying. She slept until 8:00 the next morning with a 1 hour wake up at 2:30 am for some talking, some milk and a diaper change.

The best news is our baggage just arrived. So now we have our Christmas gifts and we can change our clothing. Yippee!!! Not sure boarding another plane on Monday sounds so great, but the promise of 85 degree temps in Mexico will make it easier! :-)