A Very, Very, Very Sad Story

This, my friends, is a very, very, very sad story.  

Seriously.  

It had two adults (me & my mom) and two kids (mine) in tears.

Here's the story:

Our flight to Tucson was at 8:30 am on December 10th.  We had everything ready--had the kids up early enough to park our van and get to the ticketing counter by 7:20.  

Everything went perfectly--the kids were very good, despite being woken up at 5:30am, and we made good time to the airport.  We made it through the line and got up to the counter.

Agent: "And where are you traveling to today?"

Us: "Phoenix"

Agent (looking at her screen, confused): "What time is your flight?"

Us, getting nervous: "Umm...8:30?"

Agent: "We don't have an 8:30 flight.  Our flights to Phoenix left at 6:00 am and 7:30 am."  

At this point we check our tickets, which, like we thought, said 8:30 am.  

We show them to the agent, who starts fiddling with her computer.

"It looks like we changed your flight to 6:00 am.  You were sent three emails telling you about this change."

That's right.  Two weeks before our flight, they canceled our flight and shoved us on a 6:00 am flight.  What were we going to do?  Wake our kids up at 3 am?  And the emails?  They went to Jon's spam mail.  We never saw them.  And they NEVER called to confirm that we received them.  

We spent an hour or two trying to get on another flight that day (there weren't any) or trying to get on another airline (Southwest wanted $500 for a single one-way ticket.  Not happening).  We found one that would take us, but AirTran wouldn't refund our money.  All they would do is waive the $75 it would have cost to reschedule our flights for the next day.  So generous.  

And so we called my mom to tell her that we weren't, in fact, flying into Phoenix that afternoon.  Cue some tears on both ends.  And the kids?  Well, here's Seth after being told that we weren't getting on the airplane to go to Grandma's today:

And here's Catherine, totally exhausted and confused: 

It was a really, really good morning.

Especially knowing that we'd get to do it all AGAIN the next day.

And so, we went home.

We cleaned the house (which was actually really nice--then we didn't have to do it the day we got home).

We went to Chick-fil-a and let Seth play.

We took care of some business: 

After 6 years of awesomeness, the Taurus had to go.  It would cost us more to fix it up enough to pass inspections than the car was worth.  Kind of sad to see that car go--it was the car we had while dating, when we got married, and the car we brought Seth home from the hospital in.

But our Odyssey is was awesomer.

We went to bed early (I fell asleep REALLY early) and did it all again the next morning.

Except the part where AirTran sucked, so we actually made it to Phoenix: 

Marah came with Mom to help with babies & luggage

Aunt Bubba got to be on Catherine duty when we got to Tucson: 

And Grandpa was SO happy to finally have his grandkids there.   

And Seth was happy because (for some reason) he got to open a present.

And guess what?  IT'S A CAR!!!!

He is still completely thrilled with every car he gets, even though he has about 200 of them.

Finally, we made it to Tucson!