Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

It always starts with a double flight, at least for us. Who knows? Maybe someday we will get lucky enough to have a sibling tip us off to a cheap direct flight before we buy tickets, but until then we take double flights. While our flight out of San Jose wasn't originally scheduled terribly early, over the course of six weeks prior it was bumped earlier and earlier. We arrived at 6 am to find a long line for the airline as well as security.

Having pre-printed boarding passes, we weren't sure how that helped us, until after we had waited in line 40 minutes (and were only halfway through the line) to discover there was a different line we were supposed to be waiting in because of pre-printed tickets. That line had only two people, though. [We were glad to discover this short cut before we got too far in the original line!]

Paela's first airtravel went better than we could have hoped for. She was surprised at the turbulence and the elevation drops and sat wide-eyed trying to figure out the sensation. Apparently she enjoys it, so we have a future roller coaster enthusiast. [we also heard her first giggle (while she was awake) when Wayne swung her around and around in the car seat...more evidence she loves roller coasters already!] The three of us got into Austin around the same time as Karl and Angela and, after watching several people struggle with getting car seats through security, we were grateful someone from Rebecca's grandparents' church was willing to let us simply borrow a car seat while we were in Austin. But sleeping arrangements were fun, as well. Paela slept in a clothing drawer, which we propped up (like her papasan chair) and steadily lowered over the course of two weeks so she would be more used to sleeping horizontally.

And by Thursday, I was sick with a bad cold. It didn't take long for it to take full effect on me, with the coughing through the night and an overall bad feeling of sniffles and exhaustion. Which is how I spent most of my holiday vacation: sick. We still visited Grandma and Grandpa Nissen to show them Paela.

Then I really abused my body by going to the Trail of Lights in Zilker park Friday evening. Last time we were in Austin for Christmas, we went to the Trail of Lights and it wasn't nearly as overcrowded. The only difference we can find is that we went later last time, which means fewer of the families with children were running around. The Trail of Lights has some beautiful displays [I especially enjoyed the displays coordinated with timing and music. -beck], but a poorly organized volunteer force. Waiting in lines is a terrible thing to do. And sadly the big tree I love to spin under had half the lights not functioning...we'll have to try again when Paela is older!

And while we were at the Trail of Lights, my parents were busy flying into Austin, but we didn't see them until Saturday morning. They stopped by and visited during the morning, and I wore them out playing Wii Sports [yay for Bryan bringing the Wii to play with!]. During the afternoon, we spent a leisurely drive to San Antonio with Paela screaming most of the way. Paela had decided she was tired of traveling and tired of car seats, so we had to make several pit stops for her, poor girl. San Antonio is a dump, but I guess the riverwalk is nice. We ate at a place on the riverwalk and then strolled the Alamo.

Sunday morning I woke up unable to speak. It was a blessing that by the time church was over, I had my voice back enough to give Paela a baby blessing in the evening. Everyone fawned over her and the beautiful dress Grandma Nissen made for her. Somehow we didn't end up with pictures on our camera, so we need to steal some from other people. It was nice to do the blessing at home with just family around...whoever thought of that idea is a genius.

Christmas eve was a lazy slow day for myself, because I wasn't allowed near the food preparation. Everyone else spent the day busy cooking desserts and food. I did make an authentic sauerkraut which half the crowd didn't touch [the half that did loved it!], but I can't blame them. It's only been since I went to some good German restaurants that I've learned Sauerkraut can be good with your brats.

I woke up all night long. Christmas eve was hardly restful for me. Between having Paela sleep in the same room with us [now we know why we're glad she has her own room at home...we don't have to wake up to every little noise she makes] and a nasty cold getting worse by the day, I woke every hour. Lucky for me no one was in a hurry to open presents, so I had a long nap in the morning and I think we got around to opening presents at noon. If you look at our website photo gallery, you can see that Santa came to hold Paela, but I really don't think she cared. They made her open presents as well. It was another long day for Paela and because she wouldn't nap we ate dinner by ourselves.

Because Rebecca's mother unfortunately didn't get to spend nearly as much time with Paela as she had hoped because of scheduling conflicts, we drove up to north Austin to visit her mother at work Wednesday afternoon. Paela has become a very social girl, talking to whomever will listen. She also had her first babysitter so Rebecca and I could go out on a date Wednesday evening. The evening went great and now that we know she can manage babysitters, we need to find more opportunities to abandon her.

This revelation was offset with the bad news that she no longer takes a bottle. She chokes on it and spits it out and cries when given a bottle. And we can't seem to find any information on this online. She took a bottle just fine less than three weeks ago, but now she won't drink from it at all. [I knew we ought to introduce the bottle to her early on, but somehow didn't think three weeks without having one would be a problem...oops.]

Then came disaster. Friday evening, we rearranged our luggage to fit the weight requirements to find we needed a third box. Lucky for us, the box was small and easy to carry. Unfortunately, as you will see later, our luggage all got lost.

Saturday morning was an early flight, which means no lines. It also means the flight is on time and gets us to Denver before our connecting flight. But Frontier airlines is the worst airline carrier I know of. We load on the plane 20 minutes earlier than scheduled, then sat on the plane because of a computer guidance malfunction. When that was resolved, we had to wait for the "de-icing man" to come "de-ice" the plane. Delaying the flight more than needed because they didn't have the foresight to prepare ahead of time, we landed in Denver late. Instead of rectifying the situation, we then sat on the plane for even longer because no one called ahead to get us a gate. And we then proceeded to wait for our original gate. After 45 minutes, they decided to call for a new gate.

Like that? Well, it gets better. Get into Denver and go to the customer service desk. Explain that we, like everyone else, were delayed and missed our flight. They tell us there is another San Jose flight leaving at 11:40 am on a different carrier. But it's booked. We could leave at 6 pm on United or 9 pm with Frontier. There's no way I'm taking Frontier again so we book the 6 pm flight and then decide to try to wait on standby for the 11:40. By some miracle we get onto the 11:40, most likely because someone else's connection was delayed too long, but our bags aren't coming with us. Paela screams for most of this flight because she's sick [can't avoid getting sick with such a sick daddy...poor Wayne. poor Paela.] and she's tired of travel. Now we know her tear ducts are formed because there were bucket loads of tears. I can't imagine what would have happened had we waited for the late flight. We finally got home around 2:00 pm, crashed and put Paela to sleep. She slept for hours and hours, trying to let her body mend.

This morning we woke up, and they delivered two of our three bags, claiming that is all of our luggage and handed us a torn open luggage (e.g. ruined). We called the baggage claim 800 number to find that they don't know about any box and have no clue what we're talking about even though we have the slip right in front of us that shows we had three missing pieces of luggage, not two. Want to know how it ends? So do we. Tune in next week...for more exciting adventures of Wayne and Rebecca and the Paela monster [term of affection...honest!].