Enchantingly good looks...

I'll never give up my impulsiveness, but I will admit that flying standby can be rather stressful and inconvenient at times.

The plan was for me to fly out of Seattle in the morning, for Hannah (my very best friend from all the way back in fourth grade) to fly out of Portland at the same time, and we would both reach Arizona around 2pm if all went well. If all went well. At SeaTac, I found out I would most definitely not be getting on any flights out of there that day, so (to make a long story short) I ended up driving all the way down to Portland, meeting Hannah, then killing five hours doing chemistry while she read until the 5:30pm flight left from Portland. It was definitely nice to get to spend the afternoon with Han and then get to fly down together (especially because this was Hannah's first time on a commercial flight), but it made for a rather exhausting day. However, seeing Mike, Deb, and little Ava when we got off the plane made up for it. She is one cute little baby girl, I'll tell you what. And it was in the 80's, even though it was 8 o'clock at night!

Saturday was great, full of sunshine on our faces, relaxing, playing with little Ava, hanging with Mike and Deb, walking around town, lying in the backyard. Just a perfect 82 degree day of doing nothing but having fun. I know I will always live in the northwest, but the constant sunshine is a vacation I will never tire of, that's for sure. Due to scheduling, Saturday was our only full day down there, and we were ready to head back home on a 7:30am flight Sunday morning. Before we went to bed, Deb checked the flight status and found that the flights (all of them for that day) were all of sudden completely booked with several standbys on each of them already signed up. This has never happened before for me flying standby, so I wasn't expecting not being able to get a flight home, but there wasn't much we could do except go to the airport in the morning and hope a bunch of people missed their flights so we could have their seats. Turns out, a bunch of seats came open the next morning (we think God pulled some strings), so we got on (sigh of relief), said our goodbyes to Arizona, and came home. Of course, I had to fly back into Portland instead of Seattle since my car was there, so I had to drive all the way back home from there, which meant that I was completely exhausted, rather crabby (okay, really crabby), and in dire need of sleep by the end of it all, but I suppose thus is the life of a vegabond. Or maybe it's just the life of an impulsive, last-minute, standby trip down to Arizona. Well, no matter...Deb, Hannah, Mike, Ava, it was an absolute pleasure to spend the weekend with you! And Ava, thank you for assuring me with your enchantingly good looks that yes, indeed, we have great baby-making genes on both side of our little family. Jayden, Daelyn, and Ava are quite possibly the three most adorable little girlies I have ever seen. The cards seem to be in our favor, Isaac Daniel.