Travel Day, Or Not

Today, the family started getting smaller again.  Or not.  David and Bonnie and Nathan and Emily had a flight out at 1:15pm.  Abigail and Nate rode along so they could rent a car because they were staying for a while.  They all crowded into Cheryl’s van and left at 10:30 this morning.

The rest of us packed some boxes with the stuff from Mom’s room that each sibling and grandchild had selected.  These boxes will be shipped to the siblings, with the rest of the stuff going to the thrift store.

Then there were boxes of old photographs.  We laid these all on the kitchen table and went through them.  Any pictures that really didn’t relate were pitched.  Terry got a large pile of pictures, as he will be scanning them and making them available online.  I got many of Mom’s journals, and will digitize these also.

We were halfway through this process, when several of us started receiving texts from those at the airport.  Flight delayed due to weather in Denver.  They had actually boarded the plane and the door was closed, then they were all asked to deplane.  A while later, Bonnie called me and said that the flight was cancelled.

So I hopped in the van and drove to Pasco to pick them all up.  When I arrived, they said that they had made arrangements to leave tomorrow: David and Bonnie were scheduled to leave at 5:30 tomorrow morning and Nathan and Emily a little later from Seattle.  So now I will be leaving here at 3:30 tomorrow morning to deliver David and Bonnie to the airport, coming back here, and then driving back to Pasco later on in the morning for our own flights out.

Seems like we have had more than our share of travel problems on this trip.

This changed dinner plans as well.  Our dinner group suddenly was quite a bit larger.  So we ate at the Old Warehouse in Zillah.  18 of us descended on this restaurant.  They pushed three tables together to accommodate us all.  Service was rather slow, taking over an hour for the meal, but the food was generally good and the cousins were able to connect for a while longer.  Turns out this meal was a gift from an in-law.  Thanks, Carolyn, for this thoughtful gift.

Abigail and Nate joined us for dinner. They had been to the petrified forest which they said was ‘underwhelming’.  It is good to see them get out and do things, even ‘underwhelming’ things.  They will be heading to Mount Rainier tomorrow.