Weekend adventures

[sarahmichelef]

Saturday morning we got up, finished packing, and got to the airport in plenty of time. We discovered that there's a Fisher Price play area in the airport (FisherPrice is local to Buffalo), which TRex LOVED! She was crawling all over the place, making friends with all the other kids who were playing. She very nearly got her fingers squished under the rails of a rocking horse a couple of times, but it was all good.
Flew to Newark, got our luggage and our rental car (free upgrade, whoo, and I am IN LOVE with the LATCH system for carseats - I had the thing installed in under a minute, as opposed to the 5 or more that it takes when using the seatbelts) and headed south. Got settled in the hotel, saw Jack and Lainie, hooked up with Ben for dinner. TRex had a bit of an upset tummy - she'd been spitting up little bits throughout the day. Then, at bedtime, she let loose with the bowels of hell, quite literally.
Sunday was marajade648 and Tom's wedding, which was lovely. I'm not one to cry at weddings, but I very nearly did when she came down the stairs... TRex was in a very loud happy mood, so I saw the procession while M had her out in the lobby, and then we swapped and I lurked where I could at least hear the ceremony and I watched the recessional (the wedding musicians clearly aren't asked to play Star Wars music very often). The reception was fun - Jack and Lainie ended up giving us their seats at the head table because ours was right in front of a speaker, and TRex was very bothered by the loud music. She did make a new friend, though - our friend Morgan. It was the fastest that she's ever warmed up to a stranger - Morgan was getting kisses (I'm usually the only one who gets kisses...)! We had to leave the reception right after the entree in order to get ourselves back up to Newark. Upon arriving, we discovered that there is NO PLACE TO GET GAS NEAR NEWARK. So we had to pay the freaking rental car agency for gas - pain.
And then things started getting fun. TRex's tummy was still not happy, so we had a very entertaining full-contact diaper change (I fear that the outfit she wore to the wedding is completely ruined - we'll see how it comes out of the laundry) and headed off to check in, etc. (M wasn't feeling too good at this point, either.) Got dinner, went to wait for our flight. M comments as we're looking at the departures board, "That's a lot of white" meaning that there's a lot of flight changes. And I noticed that there was a huge line at the service desk. Little did I know... Shortly after that, they cancelled our flight. M managed to get us rebooked on the first flight out in the morning, and the woman he talked to said that if we talked to a real person, they would give us a voucher for a hotel room. Yeah frikkin' right. I stood in line for 2+ hours only to learn that, no, they would not pay for our hotel room. We ended up managing to get a smoking room at the Best Western for a hundred bucks (yeah, it would have been only slightly more expensive and less of a headache for us to have stayed in Cherry Hill Sunday night, gotten to stay for the whole reception, etc.), had the entertainment of them sending us TWO cribs that didn't work (we gave up on the crib and just had TRex sleep in bed with us).

Monday (yesterday) morning we got up before 5 to get the 5:30 shuttle back to the airport. M was feeling really queasy but chalked it up to hunger... he and TRex shared a plain bagel for breakfast and he felt better so he figured it was just hunger. By the time we landed back in Buffalo, it was clear that I, too, had the stomach bug. By the time we got home, it was clear that M had not just been hungry & tired. There was one point when the two of us were lying on the floor and TRex was crawling back adn forth between us, happy as a clam (thankfully).

I ended up being the sickest of all of us. We spent yesterday afternoon in the ER getting me rehydrated (ok, we spent most of that time waiting for them to see me) because I literally couldn't keep anything in my body. M called in yesterday and today - he's still sick; I'm feeling much, much better, trying to deal with the fallout of the trip and illness (dishes, laundry, etc.). And TRex is at daycare (thankfully she's well enough to go to daycare...).

Oyvey. That was an adventure that I don't want to repeat anytime soon.