The Big Trip, Part 1

I'm going to post about our recent overseas adventure in parts, or it's never going to get done. Here we go!

The day before the trip, I was in full-on packing mode, and Robert got a call from his mom, who was going to be traveling with us. She had tried to check in for the flight early, and apparently our flight to JFK had been cancelled due to bad weather. Had anyone informed us of this? No. So, we could have shown up at the airport at 4:20am for nothing. Thank God she checked! So, I first got on the horn with the travel agency to see what the deal was, and they had no idea what I was talking about. Then, they checked their system and, sure enough, CANCELLED. Great. Fantastic. They gave me another flight option (not the one we ended up getting, incidentally), but said I'd have to call Delta. I probably called Delta 50 times before I got through to someone. Apparently, they're very busy over there. When I finally talked to someone, he was very helpful, but our only flight option (instead of our original JFK-NEA two-flight option) was SLC-Paris-NEA with a connection time of less that 45 minutes in SLC with 8 adults, 2 children with carseats, and lots of carry-on luggage. It really was the only option, so we booked it. Scary, but necessary if we wanted to get to our destination on the same day, albeit a few hours later. The best part was that, instead of our flight being at 6:20am, it was now at 1:25pm. So much better from a kid schedule standpoint. It was a blessing in disguise! Next up: the travel day.