Los Angeles, Friday

This will be a travel blog after the fact, easy on the facts. I am blogging this for no one in particular, but I want to remember this trip very much, so I will record it as it happened, for posterity.

But first, you have to remember what it looked like before we left. So aside from leaving 5 kids behind, we had very good reason to go.

It stopped snowing at midnight, which was good enough for the airport to clear away the snow and get our plane de-iced and ready to leave. Of course some of you will remember it was the same snowy Thursday night that a plane, while landing at Midway in Chicago slid off the runway. But since we weren't flying through Midway, and the snow had stopped we were optomistic. Here is what Milwaukee looked like the next morning.

Our flight was delayed by half an hour because we were waiting for the pilot and then we were waiting for the first mate. Now how would you like it if you showed up to work and had 80 some people waiting for you with their hands on their hips. But I digress. I do want to say that when the pilot did show up (I could see him walk across the tarmak and up the stairs to our plane), he had his pilot's cap, the map briefcase in his right hand and a snowbrush in his left. So what was he going to do, roll down the window and start brushing off the snow? This was in fact, exactly what happened. So here is what happened next:

And so would you.

As we got on the plane my husband and I passed a woman with a baby folding a stroller on the jetway and we commented how it has been a long time since we took a trip without a diaper bag, or a stroller or a baby for that matter and yet here we were.

It didn't last long. I recognized a friend of mine from work with her baby and they were going to California on the same plane so I offered to hold the baby while she secured the car seat and got herself situated. My husband turned around and said, "Well, that lasted like 4 minutes."

Still it was a record.