every day holds a possibility of a miracle: the flight

Leaving home was hard. SO hard. Shawnie and I both bawled our eyes out all the way out the door and out of the neighborhood. (Although I blamed my tears on the fact that Z had just completely jumped in the bucket of mop water as we were mopping our way out the door...) My sweet sister and her husband followed us to the airport to help with all our luggage and to take our van to store it. At the airport, we did the curbside drop off and suddenly they were gone and we were standing there with 9 suitcases, 5 carry-ons, 5 loaded backpacks, and a toilet chair. (no kidding, we did put it in a box. We thought about making Sari push it through the airports, hehehe) OH, AND a carseat!! Zachary was riding in Shawnie’s manual chair as a “stroller” so we could get it here as well. You should have seen the looks we were getting. Talk about standing out in a crowd, that was us. We were beyond comical. The check in line was enormous, and security was a bit challenging to negotiate everyone through, Shawnie always gets a good pat-down, and Keith and I tried to go back and forth between her and Zachary, who was still riding (quite grumpily…) in her manual chair. At this point, we had ditched the 9 suitcases and the toilet seat, but still had everything else. I have to admit, I was freaking out. Seriously more than ever before in my life. I kept making myself breathe deeply to try to regulate my heart and my lungs but I was a serious, freaking out mess inside. Because we have an individual with a disability AND a child under 5, we were ALWAYS the first ones to load the plane. And the last to exit. The flight attendants were very helpful and kind, and as we were in the front row on the first leg, we spent this short flight laughing and joking with them. I was still freaking out inside, knowing that the worst was still yet to come. Shawnie was very comfortable though, and Zachary actually enjoyed the take off. (Not so much the landing…) Before we even blinked, we were landing in L.A. where, in order to save what Keith swears was a substantial amount of money, we gathered up ALL of our luggage and walked to a different terminal with ALL our luggage, stood in a line for 2 hours with ALL of our luggage to check in for our next flight, went through security again, and barely had time to once again be the very first passengers to load the flight from L.A. to New Zealand. We flew on Air New Zealand and it was a pretty good experience. I was bummed at first that Keith split the flight up like he did, making it longer than flying straight to Melbourne, (once again, to save money) but I have to say, Z was VERY ready to get off that plane after 13 hours instead of 16. We all were. But then we had to navigate the Auckland airport with all of our stuff, minus the 9 suitcases. There was a wonderful man there, though, that helped us off the airplane, helped us navigate the airport, pushing our luggage for us, helped us get through security, helped us check our carry-on’s, so we wouldn’t have to deal with them until the baggage claim in Melbourne, and helped us check in for the next flight, walking us right to the door of the plane, which, would you believe, was the VERY SAME airplane that we just took all our stuff from and carried to another terminal in the airport. The next stretch was 4 hours and it felt like 13. Thank goodness that Z slept for half of it because we never would have made it without making mortal enemies of every single passenger on that very full flight. When we arrived at Melbourne we were tired, stinky, and pretty grumpy. We were the last ones off the plane, waiting for Shawnie’s chair, only to find out that they had sent her power chair to baggage claim and only left her manual chair. We took turns carrying Z and all the bags and the car seat, and after making it half way to customs, realized we had left Shawnie’s power chair cushions on her seat on the airplane, so Keith booked it back to get them, while we waited. Last time I went through customs, the line was huge and lasted forever. Z was absolutely finished and I was so worried about him being patient as we would have to wait. Well, because it took us so very long to get there, there was not a soul in line. We walked straight up to the desk, and the lady whisked us right through. We headed to the baggage claim where instead of fighting off crowds while we found our 15 checked bags, we found that ours were the only bags still circulating. We walked through to the lobby, and as we turned around to see my uncle and cousin, we realized we were suddenly, really truly there.

The flight was long and hard, but our prayers were definitely answered, as all along the way, we recognized angels watching over us and we, and all of our belongings, including miraculously enough, Shawnie’s wheelchair, were protected and traveled well.