Leaving on a Jet Plane...

This past Tuesday we embarked on the first of what will surely end up being a plethora of crazy and long trips with baby in tow. We left Kenai at around 11:30 a.m. to drive to Anchorage, arriving around 3:00 in the afternoon. After filling the car up with gas and getting a quick bite to eat, my brothers dropped Shannon, Lane, and myself off at the airport. At 5:40 we boarded our flight to Seattle, and in Seattle we boarded a flight to Dallas/Ft. Worth after a two-hour layover. In DFW we had a 3 1/2-hour layover before our flight to Birmingham. We finally arrived at 10:00 a.m. after almost 14 hours of flying and the almost gour-hour drive to Anchorage.


"I'm about to fly 1400 miles to Seattle, Dad!"

Lane was quite the trooper! She stayed awake for most of the first flight, and then did this for most of the rest of the trip, including the layovers:


Taken on the Dallas to Birmingham flight.

Lane was just a little fussy during the first flight and then I think she was so wiped out from not napping well that she totally crashed, sleeping through take-offs and landings. We were very blessed that our first and third flights were not full at all, so we were able to get a free seat for her car seat. On our second flight, someone gave up their window seat and took an aisle so that we could have a seat for her car seat! Oh random person, how we thank thee! Since our tickets were purchased with airline miles back in August we didn't purchase a ticket for Lane (for one thing, we didn't have a "passenger name"!) and then decided a week or so ago that we'd rather hold her than use miles to purchase another ticket. So we were very blessed to get a seat for her for free on all of our flights (and were quite grateful we didn't use our miles to buy her a seat!).

All together, Lane now has a road trip mileage accrual of about 550 miles and a flight mileage accrual of about 3700 miles. She's been to two states and will travel to two more next week. This is going to be one well-traveled kid!