Vacation Bust

From August 18 - 25, Owen and I went to Houston to visit my parents. What I had envisioned being a relaxing week of free babysitting plus visiting friends turned out to be a pretty big bust. I was traveling alone for the first time and SUPER nervous about it. Owen did relatively well, but juggling all the things you need to travel with an infant make traveling hard no matter how many extra hands you have.  I stupidly bought a cheap flight on American Airlines that stopped in Dallas. I will NEVER EVER fly American Airlines ever again. Frankly, I have rarely heard people ever getting to a place on time when flying that airline. Supposedly the plane flying us to Houston had a blown tire they had to replace. The idiots decided to half board our plane. Owen and I boarded and sat on that plane for AN HOUR AND A HALF. WHY board passengers on a stuffy plane without AC running when you knew a tire was being changed?? While this delay was happening, Houston was brewing a gigantic thunderstorm. So by the time we were in the air, the Houston weather got increasingly worse and we couldn't land. The pilot made the decision to reroute to Austin so they could refuel the plane. I was about to have a nervous breakdown at this point. We had plans to meet up for dinner with Tommy's family and I was so mad at not being able to get in on time. Once we landed in Austin, they opted to allow people to get off because they told us they had no idea when we'd get to go to Houston. I wish I could have gotten off that plane and driven to Houston because it felt like we were never going to get to there! LUCKILY, I had downloaded a TON of Baby Einstein videos on my iPad and Owen was as content as ever watching them while we were sitting on the ground waiting to take off to get to Houston. What was supposed to be 4 hours of travel time turned into 7.5 hours. Needless to say we were EXHAUSTED when we made it. Owen was such a sport and didn't complain at all. 

Grandma Becky, Carolyn, Victor and AJ came down from Dallas for the weekend to see Owen. We were so excited to see everyone! It was sad that we missed dinner with them the night before but we tried to make up for it the next day. Owen decided to not take an afternoon nap and show everyone his perfected army crawl. It was SO nice to see everyone and let the babies play together.

Unfortunately a day after the family left town, the recycled air that we inhaled on the plane for almost 8 hours did not sit well. Owen woke up on our second day in Houston with a pretty high fever. He continued to have the fever for almost 4 days. At one point we got really worried and had Danny (thank goodness for pediatricians in the family!) take a look at him to make sure it wasn't an ear infection. On top the fever, he had horrible congestion and was just plain miserable. He didn't want to eat and just wanted to nurse. It was so pitiful. I was actually trying to wean him off nursing all together except morning and afternoon, but when he developed this awful virus, I decided to put off that plan for another week. 

Because of his awful virus, we stayed in for most of the week and enjoyed Grandma and Grandpa's house and pets. We wanted to visit a lot more friends and get out more, but it still was nice to visit my parents for a few days. Thank you for spoiling Owen and taking such good care of him!!

PS: Our flight home was REALLY early in the morning and Owen slept the ENTIRE way home. Check out the very last picture. SUCH a GOOD traveler!!