As you know, we had our first big trip of the boys’ lives: we went to Austin to visit Marisa’s family.
Now we’re back (we got in this afternoon), and how did it go? The trip was lovely. Sammy and Declan had a great time playing with their cousins, seeing their grandparents, and gently avoiding interacting with their Aunt and Uncle’s dog (Luna is a very sweet dog who was only interested in Sammy and Declan when they were holding food. The twins didn’t like that).
I was worried about how the boys would fair on the plane, and they were both excellent on both trips (to and fro). Declan was a little wiggly the last hour of our trip home, but so was I.
The boys did a great job, but I can’t say the same for American Airlines. The actual flights were fine and the crews were both dandy. However, on the way there was spent 2 hours on the tarmac as they sorted out a sensor issue.
And on the way home we all made it to Philadelphia but 2 pieces of our luggage did not.
If you’ve never traveled with little kids you probably don’t know that you need to travel with a carseat (assuming car travel is going to be involved on the other end of your trip). If you have two kids who happen to be the same exact age that means you need to bring two carseats with you. We packed up our carseats and checked them with the rest of our luggage (paying for curbside checkin, by the way, is totally worth the $3 per bag).
On the way to Austin it was great, all of luggage and both carseats were waiting at baggage claim.
When we landed in Philadephia we get an alert from American Airlines that two of our checked bags had decided to stay in Austin.
As we headed to the baggage claim we hoped that those 2 bags were either both carseats or two other bags since that would make our lives easier. If we had both carseats we could Uber home as planned, if we didn’t have either we’d just take the train home.
You know where this is going.
One carseat stayed in Austin and the other was waiting in Philadelphia for us. That meant we ended up taking the train home from the airport lugging one carseat and 4 bags with us (and 2 3.5 year olds too).
I will say that we are very grateful for Septa. For $13 all of us got home quickly and safely. And no one minded that we took up a ton of seats since the train was mostly empty. We wondered what we would have done had we been going home to Austin and the same thing happened since the train wouldn’t have been an option!
Overall, this trip has proven that our boys are darn good travelers. Now we wait out the COVID clock. Tick. Tick. Tick.