Failing to prepare is like preparing to fail (adventures in traveling part 2)

Sleeping beauty on the plane

This is part two of the traveling topic.  Why the need to elaborate?  Because I learned a lesson that I'd like to share with you.  Remember how I said to bring plenty of bottles and a change of clothing/extra shirt and underwear?  Um, yeah, I meant it.  And here's why...

It's 6:45pm and we've just arrived to Denver.  AML jr was awesome on our first flight from Tampa to Denver.  She watched the movie on our laptop, napped, played with her toys quietly, smiled a lot, drank a bottle (3 bottles out of 5 remaining), and generally chillaxed for the almost four hour flight.  All of our clothing was still in tact, no spit-ups or otherwise messy situations.  We get off the plane, we're headed to find our gate and we're feeling confident about our final one hour flight from Denver to Jackson...our seemingly biggest problem was deciding what to eat for dinner in the airport.  And then...gasp...we see the screen...FLIGHT CANCELED.  AHHH!

To our great dismay, we learned that the fight cancellation was due to mechanical issues and there were no remaining flights going to Jackson that night.  We re-booked on a 6:45am flight the next morning.  We then waited 30 minutes for a shuttle to a hotel 30 minutes away in Denver--we received a hotel voucher and kudos to the Renaissance Hotel in Denver--it was clean, spacious and had a nice staff.   Our meal voucher went to good use at the hotel restaurant, and we also got a crib in our hotel room.  As we headed to sleep, we had 2 bottles left (on ice, ice packs too), enough to get through the night, the morning and into the early afternoon the next day, and clean pajamas for AML jr. 

3am rolls around, 5am ET, and AML jr is over sleeping.  She usually sleeps until 8am-9am, but like us, she was out of sorts.  So now we're all up.  No tooth brush, no hair brush (big mistakes), time to hit the airport around 4:30am.  But oh wait, the shuttle to the airport is full (the shuttle we were first on the list for, yep that shuttle).  I've doing everything I can to be patient and understanding (who has patience at 4:30am?  If you do, you are officially a saint.  Fortunately, we gave ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport).  Before I reached a level 10 freak-out, I let the New Yorker who also could not fit on the shuttle with her family, do the voice raising and hand waiving.  And it worked, we got in a cab, paid for by the hotel (thanks again for handling the situation quickly and responsibly Renaissance Hotel Denver), and we got through security before the shuttle passengers, an added perk.

Things were looking up...the flight was on time, we still had 2 bottles to spare, AML jr was napping on the flight with her clean blanket in her clean outfit and we had three seats on the plane for just us.  We arrived early, Jackson looked as beautiful as I remember and my dad was waiting for us at baggage claim.  Our bags arrived right away and we were on our way to our final destination.  Home sweet home (okay, my parents home, but close enough)

I could say, alls well that ends well because it's true, but I will end by using the famous basketball coach John Wooden's words.  "Failing to prepare is like preparing to fail.”  Enough said.