Home Again...

Though we were sad to bid Oregon farewell, I have never been happier to land on Utah soil.

Here's why:

As I mentioned before, the flight to Portland was a dream come true.  The plane was nearly empty, so we had three seats to ourselves.  The temperature was perfect.  The ride was surprisingly turbulence-free. Lola took a nice, long nap.  I was even able to play some in-flight trivia on those cool computer screen thingies attached to the seat in front of me.  Several kind travelers took pity on me and helped me with my bags as we boarded and departed. 

The flight to Salt Lake City was, in literally every way possible, the complete antithesis to our first flight together.

We were smashed into a crappy commuter plane with 4,937,459,845,934 other grumpy, smelly people.  Every single seat was taken.  The air conditioning just happened to be broken.  Lola missed her afternoon nap in the frenzy to get to the airport, so she was not her chipper self.  Quite the opposite, in fact. I got yelled at by several women when I tried to shove one of our bags into the overhead bin while balancing a screaming Lola on the seat.  The flight attendant brought me scalding hot water for Lola's bottle that nearly burned my hand off when I took it from her.

The gesture was nice, but really, when you have to use a towel to carry it around, it's probably not fit for a baby.

Anyway, back to the rant.  Poor Lola was going insane (as was I) being crammed into such a small space, so she expressed her displeasure by knocking my Diet Coke all over both of us.  As if that wasn't enough, she actually used her two little teeth to bite my cheek when I tried to comfort her.  Then she filled the diaper, or perhaps I should say exploded out of the diaper, but since I couldn't even move enough to get out of my seat, I had no way of changing her.  We hit 567,908,898 patches of turbulence, nearly causing me to add puke to the collection of Diet Coke, baby pee and spit up that already graced my sweater.

It. Was. Hell.

But the heavens took pity on me and sat me next to a sweet woman who was so helpful and kind.  She explained she was a grandma, a mother of four and a schoolteacher, so she was the perfect person to share a (tiny) row with.  I really don't know what I would have done without this little woman from Alaska.  She played peek-a-boo with Lola when she started to get fussy.  She held her so I could grab my bags when we landed.  She stayed with us until I was able to load the baby into her stroller with all our stuff.  She was an angel, and I will always remember her.

Too bad I never got her name.

Needless to say, we were thrilled to get off that plane and into daddy's arms.

And though we had a wonderful trip, I've determined that no place is as glamorous as our green couch, as long as all three of us are sitting on it together.