here we go, here we go again

Happy 2011!!!

I wonder how long it will take me to remember that it's 2011?  Occasionally it occurs to me how time comes and goes so quickly.  I still remember being in elementary school and calculating that I would graduate high school in 2004 (even at a young age, I was anxious to be out of school) and feeling like it was literally an IMPOSSIBLE amount of time and would probably never be here.  Since that time the years have passed and already I feel like I can't keep up anymore.  And I'm definitely not an almost-25-year-old in my own mind.

The holidays this year were a little different for us since we couldn't leave because of work.  But we managed to get time off for New Year's so we decided to head up to Washington to spend a few days at Zach's parents'.  Besides us, and his parents, both his sisters/brother-in-law/3 kids/3 puppies were also occupying the house, so it was more chaotic and, yes, dramatic, than usual.  And that's not to mention the drama surrounding us just getting there!

The night of the 29th when we left Utah it started to snow, a LOT.  Our flight was at 8:10 so we decided to leave shortly after 5 because of the weather.  Several times before we left and while we were driving we checked the status of our flight but it was still "on-time."  Bless Matt and Katherine for driving us... it was a loooong and treacherous ride to the airport, even though according to Zach, the roads really weren't "that bad," it was just the other drivers slowing us down!  (never mind the people we saw spun out in the middle of the road or off the side)  When we finally got to the airport (2.5 hrs later) we ran inside only to find out we could no longer check our bag- you have to check it 30 minutes before the flight and it was 7:45- we were 5 minutes too late!  So the man at that counter put us in line for the ticket counter to see if we could get on the next flight.  We waited there for a few more minutes, and when we finally got to the lady at the counter, she said "Too bad you weren't here 5 minutes ago, they just delayed your flight to 8:30."  We immediately launched in to protests that we WERE here, we WERE!  But it didn't matter, because our bag would have had to have been checked 30 minutes before, and it was now after 8 PM.  So we should have been there just a few minutes earlier... or later?  It still seems ridiculous to me.  Long story short we battled back and forth with the lady at the counter until we reached the conclusion that our only option was to get on the next flight stand-by.  It wasn't looking good for us since 9 people had to miss the flight for us to get on, but we had to check our bag regardless of whether or not we made it on.  So we sent our bag off and went to wait at the gate.  If we hadn't made it on that flight -the last one of the night- the entire next day was sold out, so we crossed our fingers and prayed and somehow... SOMEhow... we made it on, and got seats next to each other!  7 hours after we had left our house we finally made it to Washington.  It was a long night.  But what little miracles we have to be grateful for!