Tales of a Ten-Hour Layover

So I'm finally sorting through all my photos from our trip to California in December! Amazing, I know! It was our first time traveling home in four-and-a-half years and the grueling schedule of trying to get to California reminded me all over again why I DO NOT fly home every year. Let me give you a brief synopsis of our travels up to the time of this now infamous layover. We flew from Frankfurt to Chicago, having been up a total of 13 hours at that juncture. The layover time between our flight to Los Angeles from Chicago was not long enough for us to make it through customs and security AND to our next gate so we spent almost five hours in Chicago before taking the last flight out to L.A. Upon our arrival in L.A. at 11:20 p.m., United told us we had two options: get a hotel and come back at 6 a.m. to check in and go through security all over again or stay in the airport. We opted to stay in the airport and when we looked around us, the airport was completely deserted except two other folks from our flight who were sacked out at the gate. Exhausted, I plopped my stuff down in front of a row of chairs and passed out until 3 a.m. When I woke up, Joe and the kids were STILL awake and happily gaming on their various electronic devices. After using the little girls room, I began to document our adventures in LAX. The picture above is a happy picture of my little gerbils behind the gate counter at United. Come fly with us! (Don't you just love how happy Jordan looks?!)

Okay, I loaded the photos in the wrong order. This is at about 8 a.m. when I've put my make-up back on, breakfasted thoroughly (and expensively) at Starbucks, and am perusing my iTunes list.

The kids did alot of this while we were in the airport. There was hardly anyone in the airport while we were there so we helped ourselves to their electrical outlets to keep everyone fully charged and functional. Since United wouldn't pay to put us in a hotel, the least they could do was give us a little free electricity!

Ahhh, the lovely sunrise over Los Angeles!

This is where things were a little crazy! We spent about 45 minutes playing with my neck rest. There was a wild game of catch and keep away from Jordan, as well as an entire series of photos on what Jordan could do creatively with it. This is one of his more stylish poses.

Below, Joe is despairing over the fact that Starbucks is not open at 4:30 a.m.! When they did open later, we ended up spending almost $60 in the store on breakfast coffee/hot chocolate/food and a lovely mug to commemorate our special time in the airport.

It's a shame this photo didn't come out clearer because it's a hoot! After I woke up a bit, we discovered that the gate we were camped out at wasn't the gate we were leaving from so we decided to move. While walking through the airport towards the right gate, we realized that we pretty much had a run of the place and could do what we wanted. This is gonna sound crazy but I literally dropped my stuff in the hallway and rolled across the floor. For about two hours we just played in the hall. This is Joe's wild flight of fancy, playing "Super Joe!" Exhaustion made us extra giddy so we chased each other around, the kids took off their shoes and slid across the floors, and we probably entertained whomever was manning the security cameras that night. How many people can say they had the run of an international airport for ten hours?

I got down on the floor and took a photo of Jordan during one of his sliding moments.

The most insane aspect of this entire adventure was the fact that we could have driven home in four hours if we could have found a car rental place that was open! I have lots more photos from our adventure in LAX but thought I'd give you just a taste of our unique travels over the Christmas holiday. I'm so thankful that I have a family capable of seeing a bad situation and turning it into something memorable. Until next time!