Oregon trip: Day One--getting there

My Grandma Lagerstedt's funeral was a week ago today. My aunt knew how much she meant to me, so flew Lincoln and I to Oregon for the funeral. My original plan was to not attend, as the whole family went to visit her at Christmas-time, and plane tickets are pretty expensive for a grad student's family. 

I got up at 4:30am on Thursday, and a few minutes after 5am the family was in the car on our way to the airport for my 6:50am flight. We were supposed to arrive in Denver at 8am and take off for Portland at 8:35am, arriving at PDX at 10:20, then after a stop at Ikea, home to Corvallis around 2pm. Sounds great, right?

Not so much.

Fortunately the flight was only half full, so I was able to have Lincoln in his car seat, and he slept from MSP to Denver. That was the one nice thing. Denver was foggy, so after circling for 40 minutes, the pilot attempted to land. That was a no-go, however, and the pilot pulled up when he couldn't see the runway. Since we were low on fuel, we headed to Colorado Springs, where we refueled and waited in the plane for over an hour. Then back to Denver to try to find connecting flights for most of us. 

I had held it together really well until after I got my connecting flight info--3 hours away. I went to my gate and cried. And cried. (I'm not usually so weepy, but being pregnant, off schedule with a tired baby and on my way to my grandma's funeral, I was pretty much a basket case.) I called Stephen, who called his brother who lives in Denver, who called his wife, who called me. I told her I didn't know what to do, so she said she was putting her kids in the car and coming to get me. Oh, thank you, Deanna!!

I eventually made it through the (very complicated) airport and we met up, went to her house and had a delicious lunch. It was SO NICE to be in a home, not a busy, cold airport, especially when I wasn't feeling like myself. Lincoln caught a 15-minute nap in the car. Deanna took me back to the airport, Lincoln and I went through security and we went back to the gate. Unfortunately the flight was full, so Lincoln couldn't be in his car seat. I prayed that someone kind would sit next to us, and my prayer was answered. Lincoln didn't sleep at all, but I caught a 10-minute nap while my kind neighbor watched Lincoln. 

I finally met up with my mom a little before 5pm, and we stopped by Ikea for some meatballs (they don't really do take-out there, so thank goodness Mom keeps plastic forks in her emergency car bag!), then off to Albany (with a sleeping baby--hooray!) to prepare Grandma's body for burial. That was a very sacred experience. 

Finally we rolled into Mom's house about 8:15pm. Exhausted. Before I did anything I put my extremely tired baby to bed. It was an incredibly long day for both of us, and I knew I'd be waking up early with the time zone change (2 hours).