Hello, Charlotte!

Not going to lie, Charlotte, but our welcome was pretty lousy. I would have thought your Southern hospitality would extend to the sky, but alas.

We scheduled our morning just so, so that we could make it to the airport on time. We made it on time. Then things got ugly. Mind you, we were hauling around two babies, two car seats, four large suitcases, two carry-on suitcases, a stroller, a duffle bag, a backpack, and a diaper bag. Just getting to the airport was an ordeal. Two separate cars were required. Getting inside was another story. We moved, piece by piece, through the revolving doors to a massive line to print our boarding passes. I'm not sure what made the airport so busy today, but curses to whatever it was. Amid the hustle and bustle of a moving line and a moving toddler, we couldn't figure out why my boarding pass didn't look like Curtis's. An attendant, who kindly (and sorely) brought us a suitcase we had left at the beginning of the line, checked our papers and sent us to "Special Services."

Apparently, our first flight to Minneapolis was delayed just enough for us to miss our flight to Charlotte. We would have had to stay the night until Sunday morning. Funny, Curtis's boarding pass alerted him to no such delay. Were they just going to surprise him when he landed in Minneapolis? Shame, Delta! And certainly there was another option besides staying the night in Minnesota. Can you imagine little us, trying to get all that luggage (and babies and car seats and bags and stroller) out of baggage claim, to a hotel, and back to the airport in the morning? Not a chance. The lady behind the counter tried so hard to find another flight for us, but she just couldn't. So how is it, you ask, that Curtis was able to find another flight through Atlanta within 10 minutes? We aren't sure how, but it took her nearly a full hour to find the same flight in her system that Curtis found on his phone.

That's not even all of it.

Trying to figure out what to do with our 11 pieces of luggage

 We rescheduled our flight to Sunday morning, so that meant we had to move all our luggage back outside, go get the cars, drive back . . . oh wait. Did I not mention we already moved out of our apartment? Luckily, we still had our apartment because Eva Lu and Marty were going to use it after Marty's surgery. But there wasn't much in it. And Sebastian's crib was neatly tucked away in the storage unit. And all our clothes were vacuum packed in our suitcases. And we had no food or dishes. And we had only enough paper diapers to last us that day.

Yet, somehow, we survived.

Our flight from Portland left bright and early Sunday morning, and with the layover in Atlanta and the three-hour time difference, we wouldn't arrive in Charlotte until 10 p.m. I had arranged with someone from the ward to help us get from the airport to our apartment since we most likely wouldn't be able to fit all of our junk in the trunk of our (who knows what size) rental car.

The flight itself went well. Sebastian behaved and Livia was an angel. We, of course, didn't expect anything else.

Wearing noise-canceling headphones during nap time

We got some dinner in Atlanta. And then we got a gate change. And then a delay. The crew for our flight was still in the air on their current flight. Fifteen minutes. No big deal. Then another fifteen minutes. I called our help in Charlotte to let them know. Another thirty minutes. I called back. These delays put us in Charlotte around 11 p.m. If she were to drive to the airport, wait for our luggage, wait for our rental car, and drive back, we wouldn't be back until clear after midnight. She assured me it was still OK, but if the flight were delayed again, she would not be able to make it.

Another hour.

"I suppose we'll just have to figure something out when we get there. Maybe we can get a taxi. Or have the airport ship us our luggage." At least we had time to make a plan! Did I mention it was Father's Day? We didn't get Curtis anything.

Happy Father's Day!

When we finally boarded, it was probably 10:45. The flight itself lasted only about thirty minutes. We probably could have driven to Charlotte by now, we thought. Sebastian took another nap (which would help him stay wide awake until 4 a.m.). Since we landed after midnight, Curtis left me to fend for myself getting the car seats, the stroller, our carry-ons, our duffle, and the diaper bag . . . and the babies to the baggage claim area. He sprinted to the car rental before it closed for the night.

Heaven sent us two Southern angels to drive all our stuff to the baggage claim. They pulled my bags off the belt for me and placed them on my very own cart. Then Heaven sent us a compact car.

Now, I believe this is one of those miraculous experiences that science cannot explain: We fit everything we had in that 2014 Ford Focus. Three large suitcases in the trunk, two car seats in two adjacent back seats, two carry-ons under the car seats, the stroller folded in the front passenger seat with the last large suitcase balanced on top and the backpack on the floor. Then I squeezed in the back with the last two bags on my lap. And I believe if we tried to fit everything in there again, it would seem impossible.

Heaven was not finished. We pulled into our apartment complex and looked at the first building on our left. "Well, here's where number 207 is." We got out, unlocked the door, and brought everything inside. It was already after 2 a.m. It wasn't until the next day that we found out every building has a number 207. Did we really just pull up to the exact building (There are dozens of buildings.) on the first try? Lucky break or tender mercy? We tend to favor the latter.

Charlotte, you welcomed us well after a hard weekend. I suppose Southern hospitality is a thing afterall.