Update Central, Population: You

First of all let's just get to my hair. I got a new haircut awhile back, but I'm just now showing you how awesome it is:


Nice, right? I know. I know.

I also promised updates about our trip to PA and I'm going to try to follow through with that. We had a hellish flight out of Cedar Rapids (Eastern Iowa Airport...serving all of Eastern Iowa...that's a lot of area for one super crappy little airport, it's amazing). I'm going to try to recap that for you, but I've told the story a lot now and it's getting old. But I always try to give my public what they want.

We were scheduled to fly out of Cedar Rapids at 11:30 AM on December 27 and arrive in Allentown, PA at 4:00 PM on December 27. We arrived in Philadelphia at 9:30 in the morning on December 28. So I guess that the airline sort of got us to where we kind of wanted to go, sort of around the time we wanted to go there. I mean, thanks guys! I could have driven to Allentown before I got there on the plane, but I wouldn't have spent nearly as much money so thanks for the opportunity to sit in the airport for a day and give you $800 for the privilege. Oh, and the extra $15 charge that you hit us with on the way home (also delayed, but not as much) for checking a bag? Double thanks for that! That was awesome.

So we got to the airport on the 27th at about 9:45 in the morning and had a breakfast sandwich and I took some motion sickness medicine (anti-, not pro-) and then we went through the friendly airport security (I'm being sarcastic, those people are not friendly, they are suspicious and angry and pushy people). We started waiting at the gate for our flight. No problem we thought. This is fine. Everything's fine. So we wait. And wait...and our flight time comes and goes and it then our connection flight time in Chicago comes and goes. So we go up to the desk and get booked on later flights so that when we do get to O'Hare we can get to somewhere else. They book us on a flight from O'hare to Washington Dulles and then from there to Allentown arriving at 11:30 PM. Not ideal. I'm not really digging getting on two planes let alone 3 and we were supposed to get in by 4:00PM, but whatever fine. So we sit down to wait some more. Then, miraculously we board. Ok, great! We're going! We'll get to O'hare and then we'll go to D.C. and then we'll be there. Better than nothing! So we sit. Hm...that's strange. Suddenly the stewardess, who was probably on her second day of the job, says, "Oh, oh no. Oh no, that's not good. Oh, that's very bad." Which is just as bad, if not worse, than when a hairdresser says, "oops". Then, Dingbat, gets on the loudspeaker and says, "Um...yeah, I just wanted to explain why I was acting so unprofessionally there. We were closing the door and it's so cold that a wire on the door snapped and so now the door won't close." Apparently that's bad. I'm no mechanic, but apparently you can't fly with the door to an airplane open. Don't ask me to explain, just trust me. So now the pilot comes out to apologize to the plane full of angry delayed passengers. He says that they don't have a mechanic at this airport because they contract in employees here, so they have to call the mechanic and he'll be there to fix it soon and then we can go. This turns out to be a lie. First of all, this is apparently the same mechanic that delayed us initially because there was something else wrong with the plane when it came in, so that's why we were waiting before. We all get off the plane. Now Zach and I are going to miss our next connection because the roads are now icy and apparently the mechanic lives in the middle of nowhere and can't get in very quickly, so he'll be there in like an hour or something. We get booked on another flight from Chicago to Allentown and we get put on standby for another flight that's leaving from Cedar Rapids to Chicago. We some how get on the other flight to Chicago. This is good because it's the last flight out to Chicago that we could get on until Monday morning. Bad news is, when we get to O'hare our flight to Allentown is cancelled and there are no more flights to Allentown until Monday morning. We wait in line at the customer service counter for 1.5 hours. This is not time well spent. Now we are tired, hungry, angry and disappointed. Some of us more than others...Z, I'm looking at you. We get up to the counter and Zach basically loses the plot*. He doesn't really yell, but he gets pretty pissy. The customer service agent stops speaking to him and only addresses me. We cannot get a flight to Allentown, but we can get a flight to Philadelphia at 6:00 in the morning on Sunday. We decide to go for this option because it is the only option we have. Using what I like to call "Good Cop Bad Cop" Zach and I get a super sweet hotel room for free. They were not giving out free vouchers for hotel rooms, they were giving out discounted room rates, but we were able to get a free room! I think it's because the customer service guy felt sorry that I was going to be dealing with Zach for the rest of the night and took pity on me. We catch a shuttle to the hotel. Here are some pictures of our suite. It was super nice. Really nice room. Too bad we were only in it for a few hours, but still.


Our bed, very nice, soft and big. I slept about 2 hours in it. Delightful. We had to wake up at 3:30 because we needed to get to the airport to catch the 6 AM flight.





We went to dinner at Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse. It was expensive, but really nice. We felt we deserved it. Then we went back to the hotel, showered and went to bed. I didn't really sleep because apparently whenever I only have a few hours to sleep I wake up every 20 minutes in order to check how much more time I have to sleep. Long story short. We made the flight on Sunday morning and got picked up in Philadelphia. Basically it took us 12 hours to get to Chicago. We could have driven to Chicago, forgotten something, driven back to Iowa City, then driven back to Chicago in the time it took us to get there on Saturday and it wasn't even our final destination. AWESOME!

Anyway, we finally got into PA, got to the in-laws and partied hard. It was a good week. I was going to write out all the notes that Zach took from the time there, but I took way, way too much time to tell this plane story, so I'm going to just say that we had a good time. We visited with friends and family, ate a lot, drank a lot, went on a tour of historical Bethlehem, walked to New Jersey and then back to PA in one day (see pictures below) and had a baby.


We didn't want to say anything, but Zach was pregnant and now we have this beautiful baby. Not really. Although it would explain the weight gain, eh Zach? I can't talk. It looks like I've been pregnant for about 5 years now. Stupid winter weight gain! That's actually Zach's cousin's baby. The first boy born on that side of the family since Zach was born. He's super cute. I'm going to use this picture for our Christmas card next year because it makes us look like we've got a nice little family unit going.

Ok, so anyway, to recap. Flying - sucks. Airports-suck. Traveling- sucks. Seeing family and friends - Awesome. Learning about history- Awesome. Holding babies that you can give back when they get cranky and not having to pay for them and raise them for 18 years - Priceless.

Happy New Year to you all from your favorite couple:


(Taken on New Year's day. Our first New Year as a married couple. GO US!)



*This is a British slang term that means "throws a fit". I love it and want to make it popular across the pond here.