what's cooking?

Are yearly cruise was wonderful and we enjoyed every second!  

Getting home, not so much.  Right from rolling our luggage to the transfer bus on, there were issues of the major kind.

First: as usual, my body was in full rebellion.  So pushing luggage bordered on torturous.

Then the driver kept hounding everyone for ttips. If that wasn't enough he emptied all the baggage a quarter of a mile away from the arrival terminals!

We all had to push our stuff to another area for a shuttle bus to take us to the departure terminals -2 miles away!

Needless to say when we finally got there Steve was on the phone and complained about this and they did give us back our $70 fee. To their credit, Celebrity did apologize profusely.

Southwest left on time.  That is where our travel day home became a very trying experience.

Dallas was having a severe storm with heavy air congestion.  So they asked the pilot to circle.  We were about to land 15 minutes early.  The storm not only made it so we would only be 15 minutes late.  But later they told us to go and divert to Austin.

Our plane did not have enough fuel to keep circling. No one was allowed to get off the plane.   We had to wait for the weather to clear, as well as refuel.  What we originally were told was that we would be on the ground 25 minutes and then it would be a 28 minute flight back to Dallas.   By then the storm would have had passed.

Instead we were stuck there on the tarmac for almost 3 hours because now the storm had hit Austin.

Eventually , we did get up in the air and back to Dallas.

We have to say —Southwest airlines was wonderful!  Through the entire thing they just kept on updating Steve as to what our new flights would be and when we would eventually get back home to Phoenix. 

The airport in Dallas was a complete zoo.  The storm had either made all the flights delayed indefinitely or canceled.  There were so many people trying to get other flights.  Thanks to Southwest we had what we needed so we proceeded to go try to get something to eat.

What wound up happening was we finally got on a flight at around 10:30 PM.  But not to Phoenix.  We were re-routed to Ontario, CA!  Then we all had to get off the plane because it was a different number And then walked back on.

We finally touch down at Sky Harbor at 2:30 AM.  Our original landing time was 6:15 PM the night before.

We then had to find a Southwest Baggage person because our luggage had somehow arrived on time and was now locked up.  Again only compliments for how well Southwest helped us out.

Next was to get the shuttle back to the parking lot for our car and the 45 minute trip home.

Obviously, the girls did not get to come home until Sunday morning.  We crawled into bed at 4:00 AM, knowing we had to be up to get the girls home before leaving to celebrate Adam's 40th birthday.

Neither of us really slept.

All in all, we can't complain to much.  All these years travelling back and forth to Ft. Lauderdale and Miami, this was the only time weather conditions made getting home a whole blog entry.

Now you know that next week I will have to talk about the fact that somehow I am the mom to a 42 and 40 year old..