No missing digits....

Dave, Aubrey and I braced ourselves for the cold last Saturday and hopped on a flight to Iowa City. We had a lot on our agenda...a meeting with Aubrey's new preschool, finding a place to live, checking out the town, etc. A couple of days before the trip, I checked out the local paper online and read a story about a drunk college student who passed out in an alley after a night of fun. He woke up with frostbite and lost a couple of fingers and toes as a result. I thought, how in the world could someone be that drunk. Then we got there. Now I know. I am 98 % sure that he was drinking to numb himself from the miserable, bone-chilling cold weather that one experiences while living in Iowa City.

Other than the unbearable cold, our trip was pretty successful. Aubrey passed the interview to attend Willowwind School, a private preschool that takes a child-centered approach to learning in their environmentally friendly new building. Of course, she cried for about an hour afterward because she was so upset about going to a new school. She was actually so upset that she puked three times. Regurgitated cheetohs look unbelievably orange on bright white snow. We also found an apartment, I think. We changed our minds from renting a house to renting an apartment based on the number of people we saw with shovels and red faces, braving the cold to clean their driveways and sidewalks.

After our successful Monday, we took off like ice road truckers and headed back to the airport. The highway median was littered with cars that had been abandoned by their owners after ending up in a pile of snow. Luckily we survived the icy roads and managed to get back to the Cedar Rapids airport with all of our fingers and toes. Then the fun began. Our flight was delayed. We were supposed to leave at 6:24 PM. We left about 10:50 PM. You can't get a direct flight to Austin out of Cedar Rapids, so we had to make a connecting flight in Chicago. We missed it. United then booked us on an American flight that would leave early the next morning. We thought we might be able to walk the mile over to the American terminal and retrieve our boarding passes for the next day. Then we could relax and possibly get a hotel room. The arrows pointing toward the Hilton were definitely calling my name at that point. So, we walked with our sleeping child and 4 carry-on bags in tow. We got there and spoke to an American representative. She tried to look up our tickets, but she said that United had only reserved spots for us. There were no tickets. Back to United. Booked on another flight. Back to American, no tickets! Aubrey then wakes up. Dave walks back to United. No one is there. He calls customer service, they say we have tickets. He walks all the way back to American. Their customer service says we have no tickets. Meanwhile, anyone who walks by gives me a sympathetic look and tells me that American has set up cots at Gate K1. Finally, around 1 AM, with Dave nowhere to be found, Aubrey and I venture to K1. It was quite the scene. There were people sleeping on cots covered in green airline blankets. I was thinking it looked inviting, Aubrey thought it looked scary. WE left. We met up with Dave at that point and decided that we should go wait by the United customer service desk so we could be there first thing when they opened. We started walking. It was about 2:00 AM at this point. We found an indoor playscape; Aubrey was hyper as ever and played for a good 45 minutes. We finally made it to the United terminal and fell asleep on a bench around 3:30. We woke up around 5; Dave disappeared again while I watched Aubrey sleep. He was still having a hard time figuring out the details. I grabbed the sleeping Aubrey and our 4 bags and walked over to see what was going on. Dave was on some guy's cell phone talking to customer service. He was given 3 numbers to tell the American counter. At this point, I started to cry. I went to the United desk, and the lady took pity on my poor soul and checked our tickets. She seemed like she knew what she was doing even though the numbers on the tickets she gave us were nothing like the ones Dave had just gotten over the phone. I calmed down at this point though, and I decided we could walk confidently to the American counter. When we made it, the lady said she couldn't give us boarding passes yet because she was still checking in the first flight. Scary. However, she did say our new passes looked promising. Good to know. In the end, we got on a flight to Dallas. It left at 9:20 AM. We made it to Dallas and ran to our connecting gate so we wouldn't miss our flight to Austin. We settled on the plane and finally touched down in Austin around 1:30PM.

I do have to say that Aubrey is a great kid. She was upset when she realized she was staying in the airport all night, but she managed to control her emotions. Dave and I were so proud of her on this trip because it almost sent us to the breaking point, but she really handled the stress well. She's growing up right before our eyes. Our year in Iowa will fly by, and then she will be starting kindergarten. It's moments like this past weekend when you realize how much you appreciate home and family. Moments that will be etched into our memories forever; even though I was half asleep, I will never forget playing with Aubrey on the indoor playscape at 2:30 in the morning. Watching her run around and play made all the craziness of the evening seem bearable, picking up Addy and giving her a kiss after a weekend of not seeing her made all the tiredness disappear, and going home with my family at the end of a long weekend made me feel at peace. Pictures of our trip will follow.