Our Family Adventure

As many of you know, my hubby's grandfather passed away last month.  His services were held near Philadelphia, PA. 

Now, we had to find a way to PA.  I didn't want to chance taking the van since it has a habit of cutting off and on for no apparent reason.  I first thought of renting a car.  I plugged in the address to MapQuest and it told me that it was 18 long lovely hours.  No thank you.  The drive down when we moved was enough for me :)

We thought about flying but the cost was not what we wanted to spend.  The more we thought about it, the more we knew that we wanted to pay our respects as a family.  We had to find a way to PA.

We are very fortunate that we made some money on the house we sold in VA.  I wanted to tuck that money away in a CD or Money Market account but we decided that we would use it for the flight to PA. 

The boys were very excited to fly.  With the exception of little Michael, they had never flown before and little Michael was too little to remember his first flight.

The closer the days got, the more excited the little ones became and the more nervous the older ones got.  The day finally came and we loaded up the van and off the airport we went.

While waiting for our flight, a lovely lady sat down right beside us and ate her lunch.  I was explaining to Kevin that flying was not that bad and that once we got into the air he would be OK.  We got split up on the flight to PA.  Chris and Kevin were seated together.  Nathan, little Michael and myself were seated together and my hubby was somewhere in the middle of the plane.  They wouldn't even let us board together :(

Chris and Kevin found their seats and who should sit right next to them but the lovely lady who sat with us in the airport.  She helped Kevin so much and let him hold her arm when the flight took off.  Who ever she was, I am very thankful that she was there for my boys :)  It turns out, that they now love to fly.

The funeral was absolutely beautiful.  Willie~ Pop's grandson played several amazing violin pieces.  He is truly talented with violin.  We cried, we laughed and we cried some more.  People shared stories and spent the afternoon with loving family.  It was a absolute beautiful day. 

The adventure home as just that~ an adventure.  We get to the airport and get on the plane.  Everything is going great until the pilot announced that there was a problem and back to the gate we were going.  A lot of people were annoyed but I would rather have a problem on the ground than in the air :)

We finally take off and land in NC.  Unfortunately, our connecting flight took off without us.  The airline was very nice and was going to put us in a hotel.  But my lovely sis in law announced that we would be staying with them:)  We took this as a sign that Pop wanted us to have more time together:)

It was great seeing my younger boys playing with their cousins that they don't get to see as often as we would love to.

We finally made it home except for the fact that we had to land at a different airport in Florida.  We had to rent a car to drive to the airport that my van was sitting in and to get our luggage.

As I said, it was quite an adventure.  But we had this adventure as a family :) 

I can't wait to see where our next adventure~ hopefully not so wild and crazy~ takes us :)