The Great Adventure

We are back.. back home from our cross country (half of it at least) to Missouri. We went, we saw, we got stressed, we relaxed, we took pictures, we visited, we laughed, we drove, we walked, and we walked and we walked.

Visited the Zoo (and yes, we saw the baby zebra), Powell Gardens, Crown Center, Union Station, Holden, and a few other spots I can't think of at the moment.

We took a ton of pictures with the Xti (over 800) so we will have much to discuss and look at in the near future. Let me just say, that traveling through Chicago O'Hare with 4 kids, 3 car seats, 1 stroller, and 4 carry-on bags was quite a debacle at first. On the return trip (through O'Hare again) we had quite a system figured out and could could board a plane pretty easily. One thing that blew our minds was the fact that United DOES NOT PRE-BOARD FOR PEOPLE WITH CHILDREN AND THE ELDERLY ANYMORE! We couldn't belive it, so we just waited until the very end and got on the plane last... we got the hurry up treatment from one flight attendant and we shut her down with the fact that if they still did pre-boarding it wouldn't be such an ordeal for us to board.

The weather was pretty wacky in Chicago on our way back. Our flight out of KC was delayed by about 30 mins, then as we approached Chicago we had to circle the city for about 45 minutes until the tornado warning was ended. We were a bit freaked because we only had a 45 minute layover and we were still in the air by the time our plane was supposed to leave! But luckily when we landed we found out that our other flight was delayed and our great flight attendant called ahead to the next gate to have them hold the flight for us. The flight from KC to Chicago was great, it was probably a 150-200 seat plane with no more than 15-20 people on it.. it was so empty it was scary. We got great service from our flight attendants, they all fawned over our kids and played with them and took Lila around the plane to meet everyone. It's funny cause the Flight Attendant made a comment that Maria found to be very rude (I thought it was funny), but it was funny that she ended up being really great and made the flight fly by (sorry for that bad pun).

The flight from Chicago to Baltimore was kinda bad.. at least at first. We were stuck on the runway for 30 mins in a hot plane.. and Lila would not stop crying.. I mean like the really bad crying.. arching her back and screaming louder than she ever had before. We couldn't get her to stop, we tried everything... people kept looking at us and you knew we were the talk of the plane. We were those parents with that baby that cried for 30 minutes. But as soon as we put her in Larry's car seat and the plane started moving she finally fell asleep and stayed that way until we landed.. then she picked right back up where we left off.

I have tons more stories and funny/exciting stuff that happened that I will expound on, but for now I must get back to work.