starting the trip

 With all that said, this is a travel blog, so let’s go somewhere, like GR first.  We met up with Grant and went to Graydon’s where they keep having beer dinners that Grant and John are going to make a monthly outing.  I’m glad that John finally has an outing like all of mine that I always leave him for, because he deserves to get away from the baby and me and let loose, but when he calls me from Grant’s kitchen floor because standing is going well and tries to tell me 

 that I’m misremembering something that is happening the next day…arguing with a drunk person is never going to go well.  But, again I digress.  It’s usually going to be a good dinner when you look at the menu and have to make a decision that seems to the hardest one you’ve made in a while.  When you have to ask for multiple opinions because everything sounds so good, either you let your hunger go way too long and you would eat 

out of a trashcan, or it’s a good restaurant.  Luckily, this was the latter and while the boys got extra crispy fish and chips, I got the Carriage house beef which was excellent if a little cool for my taste.  It’s hard to keep mashed potatoes warm though unless you’re doing the potatoes throughout the night to order, so you have to live with what you get.  The meal was outstanding and even though John and Grant talked work, it apparently was talk that made John feel better because while I had two great days, John evened out the couple karma by having too really bad ones.  So, getting some things off his mind before heading off to this conference was a good thing.  We went back to Grant’s house to see Deborah who had to work past dinner and their cool house.  Everything in it is an arch.  And I mean everything.  The walls  

 arch into the ceiling, every doorway is an arch, there are arched niches, it was architecturally one of the most interesting houses I’ve ever been in.  After catching up some with our hosts, we all decided it was time for bed at 10pm if we were getting up at 4am.  Now, 4am seemed like a good time when we set it.  Quickly get dressed and in the car which is still loaded and 10 minutes to the airport, but everything takes longer than you think.  So after some breakfast of toast and banana that Grant got up to have with us, and a long slippery drive to the airport where because it is so early and I am so sleep deprived I get off an exit too early and have to get back on 96, we finally skid to a halt in garage long term parking at 4:45.  And are nowhere near the Southwest desk which we have to go through to get Oscar’s tickets after showing his birth 

 certificate.  We’re now checking in for our 5:30am flight at 5am and the lady at the desk tells us that our bag might not make the flight….we don’t care at this point, as long as we make the flight we’ll be ahead of the game.  To TSA check and the line was the hardest point of the whole thing.  They didn’t look twice at the bags and bags of meds, food, juice, formula etc for the Bean, let John go through separate with him and we were able to get to the gate and be the third to last people to board the plane…..we were both sweating by the time that we were in our seats which were next to each other, but at the very back of the plane.  If we had been on early, we probably could have had 3 seats because who wants to sit with a 

baby, but we were optimistic idiots.  The good news was, no fever this morning for Oscar.  And while he and we didn’t sleep much the night before, him because he was in a strange place and us because Oscar was in a strange place, he and John got a good hour from 3 to 4 while I listened to John snore and had Oscar on putting my arm to sleep to the point that I thought that it might be amputated and I was only having phantom limb pain at this point.  He doesn’t seem heavy, until he falls asleep and becomes an inert 24 lb bag of sand that is just cutting off all circulation.  At least a bag of sand you could shift though, a baby that is finally sleeping, you would rather lose the arm then shift him…So, while I think that the lack of sleep is going to go in our favor and he’s going to sleep on the plane….NOOOOOOO.  It’s a new place with lots of new people and things to see like tray tables and things to do like open and shut them and push up the chair arms look out the window.  So, while there was no sleeping, at least there was no crying and after talking to the lady beside us after she woke back up from her lovely nap next to a not sleeping baby, we found out that she was from Ferris too and going to a conference too, but hers was in Washington DC.  After exchanging contact information, we left the plane feeling damn good about how Oscar handled the first flight.