DC? Check

Bryan and Amory made it to DC, not without an eventful journey though! Here's the update from Amory this evening:

We got the the airport this morning and this time, being veterans, we knew to go to the scale first. It's a good thing because one of our duffles was...50.3 lbs. I had to move one pair of shoes, ha! The U****d attendants were just as friendly as ever. I expected they would not check them through to Ethiopian, so I wasn't even going down that road, but last time they still tagged them through so I thought that's what they would have to do this time. It apparently just happened because of having to pay the extra fees last time. When I asked the lady if they would be tagged to show Ethiopian, I proceeded to get YET ANOTHER lecture on how it's not U****d's policy because it's an over night stay in DC. I then told the lady, yes, we're aware of U****dd's policy on holding luggage overnight to check to the final destination, that's not what I'm asking about and I don't even want to go down that road, yet I know that every other U****d counter but Dallas will do it because there were families with longer layovers than us in DC who traveled the same day we did and United did it for them. But, we understand that this is not U****d's "policy", we're ok with that, and we don't want to discuss it. I then get ANOTHER speech on it. I think I had to say "it's ok, we don't care about that, we're not going down that road today" about 5 times before the lady finally quit talking. I wasn't even looking for it to be an issue this time and STILL ended up leaving the counter upset about it. Argh. She also failed to tell us, apparently because of her rant, that she didn't give us a seat assignment. I found out by our names being called over the loud speaker to come up to the desk at the gate. TOTALLY freaked me out, just because that one lady couldn't even tell us basic knowledge on our ticketing and what we needed to do. It has all cemented in my mind that all U****d workers receive "customer service" training to learn how to be as unhelpful as possible.

We did get on the plane though, and were happily flying along when a call came over the loud speaker for any doctor, nurse, or EMT worker to come to the front of the plane. There was a 90 year old man on the plane that couldn't breathe and his blood pressure had shot up, so we had to land in Cincinnati so he could get medical treatment. It delayed our getting to DC about 45-50 minutes, which was no biggie to us, but I kid you not, EVERYONE else on the plane had tight connecting flights. When we got to baggage claim, there were only about 5 people there to claim bags, the rest of the plane connected. I felt bad for all of the other families, but what can you do? The guy's life was much more important.

This time, being the veteran that I am now, I called the hotel for a shuttle the moment we picked out our bags. Of course, the delayed flight made us just miss the shuttle and they said the next one wouldn't be there until 1:30. No biggie..just 30 minutes and again, I felt prepared this time so we're still doing good. Well, at 1:37 I called the hotel again. The said he was on his way, but had to drop people off that were departing that day. Finally, about 1:50 the shuttle shows up. Now, we haven't really eaten breakfast, or lunch, so we're starving. We get to the hotel (this time it's Embassy Suites), check in, I have a long conversation with the clerk on the restaurant and whether or not Ethiopian comped our meals (which, of course, she had no clue about), take our luggage up to the room, and go straight down to eat. But, the restaurant is closed. They closed at 2, of course. ARGH! So we ended up walking a couple blocks away in nearly 100 degree weather to eat at McDonalds, who, of course, gets our order wrong. But WE WILL NOT BE DISCOURAGED!! Bryan prayed before we ate our chicken nuggets that we would have sweet dispositions the rest of the day..it was cute. We smiled through it all this time and don't feel frazzled like last time.

Have a good night. Tomorrow is a new day and tomorrow....we REALLY DO become real deal parents.