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Christmas Trip - Part 1 - Getting There

This picture sort of sums up our recent trip to Michigan for Christmas. Lots of time in the airport. Lots of time waiting. Lots of time in the car. But looking back, even though out travels out to Michigan didn't go as planned, we can see how God was working though it all to make it as good of an experience as possible for us. We actually made it to my parents house only 9 hours later than we were supposed too and considering the circumstances, that is pretty amazing in and of itself.

We were supposed to leave for Michigan on Monday, December 23 from Halifax at 7:00am. We had planned to leave our house at around 1 in the morning and just drive it and get there by 5 to check in for our flight. We could not leave the day before because Wilbert was directing the church choir for the Candlelight service which was to take place that Sunday evening. Well all week leading up this, they had been predicting pretty awful weather for Sunday. Saturday we had rain and there was freezing rain in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. We had a lot of snow on Sunday and both church services ended up being cancelled. But our flight was still on, so at 7 pm, Sunday evening, Wilbert and I decided that we would start on our way to Halifax. We figured that way if the roads were really bad, we could go really slow and still make it and not feel rushed.  So, we packed up everything and we were on the road by 8.

The roads on PEI were not nice at all. Very snow covered and a bit slushy. But, they were better in New Brunswick. We did run into a bit of freezing rain along the way and did go slow, but by the time we got to Truro, Nova Scotia, the roads were fine. It took us about 5 hours to get to the airport, a trip that usually takes about 3 hours and 15 minutes. Mataya slept the whole way and Joash slept for most of the trip.

So, now it was around midnight and we had a few hours to kill. For whatever reason (I still don't know why) I really thought we should just find a hotel and see if we couldn't get a few hours of sleep. So we stopped in at the Quality Inn by the airport and I asked if they had a room. They had just had two cancellations, so they did have a room for us. And then talking with the woman at the desk, I learn that our flight out of Halifax was canceled for the morning because the flight from Chicago was canceled due to the weather in Chicago! Needless to say, I was not happy that we had just driven on bad roads to find our flight was cancelled. Wilbert got on the phone with the airline and I took the kids to the room to see if we could get some sleep.

After about 40 minutes on the phone with an awesome ticket agent who tried to get us as close to Grand Rapids as possible, Wilbert tells me the closest we can get on Monday is Chicago and we can either drive from there or spend the night in a hotel and fly into Grand Rapids late Tuesday night (which would be a full day and half later than we were originally supposed to arrive. We decide to get to Chicago and drive.

So, we hopped on the 6:30 am flight to Newark. What a blessing that we had decided to go to Halifax when we did, otherwise, we would not have been able to make this flight. What a blessing we found out our flight was canceled and we were able to be rebooked so quickly. There were a lot of people around us at check in who were not able to get out of Halifax so quickly. While no sleep really happened in the hotel, it was nice to have a place to chill for a bit, and have a shower. This also meant that the kids slept on flight the Newark.

In Newark, we had a long layover until 1, where we took a flight to Chicago. We took turns walking around a bit with Joash, ate at a restaurant (Joash really wanted a waffle and our gate was near a diner that served yummy waffles.Another blessing.) Again the kids slept on the flight to Chicago and Wilbert and I caught little naps too.

Once in Chicago, once we had all of our stuff, we had a get a rental car. We tried Enterprise, but they didn't have any cars available. But they were amazing and actually helped us find out that Hertz had a car available for us and would do a one way rental. We will totally be going with Enterprise for any future rental car needs! We were finally on the road at about 5:30 and traffic through Chicago was not bad at all. The kids slept again for most of the drive.We had to stop a few time to switch drivers, as we were both rather tired. And there was some snow once we got into Michigan, but we were by my parents home by 9:30pm.  We were all very happy to be there, very tired and very thankful the trip had gone as well as it had.

More to come!
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