June 5th, The Longest Day

This morning at 10am the phone rang. It was the front desk, asking if we were checking out. Misty and I looked at each other with blank faces. We wanted to check out but we hadn't heard back from the Texas ICPC -- the people who would tell us when it was ok to leave the state. This was the morning of our tenth day in Texas. We took a gamble, packed up our things and headed to Starbucks.

Gavin slept while we waited for a phone call. Starbucks has some nice spots for hanging out so I opened up the laptop and Misty made some phone calls. It's 12:15. At 3:00pm Houston time, Misty got the call telling us we could go home. I checked Continental's website, looking for flights home. I found us a flight leaving Texas at 5:50 CST. We booked our flights, paid our flight-change-penalties and drove over to the rental-car return facility. There was some packing to do. We had brought two duffel bags with us to Houston and we had purchased a third the night before, to make packing for easier. Most of what we had purchased fit into the third duffel; the rest we asked the rental agency to donate to a local womens' shelter. After settling our bill, Gavin, Misty and I toted our three duffel bags, one computer backpack, one shoulder bag full of photography gear, a diaper bag and an infant's carseat towards the airport shuttle.

People aren't as polite as they once were. No one offered to lend a hand as we struggled with our things. We had to hustle to get aboard the shuttle like everyone else and it was tough finding a spot to stow the luggage. I wasn't impressed and muttered my irritations under my breath. After a short ride it time to jump off the shuttle, drag our heap of luggage to the ticketing desk and get our boarding passes. Security wasn't too bad -- except for having to pour out our baby bottles. I'd stashed my laptop in my checked bags to eliminate that hassle. We killed an hour or so near the gate and boarded our plane. Gavin slept through take-off and landing. Actually, he was really good for the entire trip back to Maryland. We did have to change a diaper mid-flight but that was uneventful. : )

At 9:50 we touched down in Maryland and headed off to grab the luggage. Jump on the shuttle, ride over to long-term parking and it was time to try and find the Fit. Even though we couldn't remember where we parked, the car wasn't hard to spot as Lot A had been closed and was almost empty. Next leg of the journey: stow the luggage, get Gavin situated and head for Colora. An hour and a half later and I got to wake up the girls -- a major surprise for them. They thought that I was arriving in the morning -- not all three of us arriving this evening. We spent an hour hanging out w/ Aunt Erin and pointed the little Fit back towards Germantown, MD. After wading through a surprising amount of early morning traffic (three construction zones that had us in stop&go traffic) we arrived home at 1:45am EST. At about 3am I fell into bed for a long nap.

At 10am Misty woke me up, frantically telling me that Abby was vomiting and had a 103 degree fever. Time for our next adventure to begin . . . . .