SparkleMommy
Mouseketeer
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- May 29, 2014
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Chapter 6 - Travel Day(s) - Part 3
October 10th
Luggage Riding as an Olympic Sport!
After finishing our lunch, we headed to our gate - and Peter decided to get his carry-on there by riding on it (thus the name of this chapter):
We got to the gate and got our gate check tickets for 2 of the car seats (they were together in the red back you can see on the stroller in the gif above) as well as the stroller and in fairly short order they said that we could head onto the plane. So Judi took the kids ahead while I had to manage the stroller with bags and car seats ... and of course the bag with the car seats it was too wade to get through the door onto the gateway so I got stuck while they were ahead and didn't notice
And of course now people behind me were trying to get through as well - so I quickly unloaded the stroller, literally though the bag with the car seats through the door, got the stroller through and reloaded and headed down the gateway. Got to the bottom of the ramp and left the car seats and stroller we were gate checking and then took the third car seat onto the plane with me along with one of the rolling bags and headed back to our seats. We tend to try to be close to the back of the plane due to:
1) Closer to the bathrooms and little kids tend to have to go a lot
b) when leaving the plane easier to go at the end since we have to unhook the car seat and just a lot of stuff to bring back
iii) greater chance of there being extra open seats so we can spread out a bit more
So I get to the back and start to strap the car seat into the window seat in our row when all of a sudden the announce over the loudspeaker that I need to come back to the front of the plane. Did I mention we were in the back of the plane? So I basically had to swim upstream the entire way back to the front of the plan while everyone else was trying to come on to the plane and get settled ... so I roughly looked like this:
Turns out that the staff could not figure out how to fold up our stroller. Of course this is not our normal stroller, so I couldn't figure it out either and had to call Judi. Fortunately she answered and walked me through it ... and we definitely didn't make the same mistake on the way back.
So we strapped Peter into the car seat and I sat on that side of the plane along with Olivia as well and Judi was in the aisle seat on the other side of the aisle holding Emma - who was quite squirmy. Made us wish we had paid for a 5th seat for her. Prior to take off, Peter struggled to tell when we were on the ground vs flying, especially for take off and asked roughly 3,267 times if we were flying while still on the ground waiting for our chance. So that started to get annoying.
Fortunately for us, the middle seat next to Judi was open so once we were in the air she shifted over and Emma had her own seat:
She was still squirmy and trying to get out of the seat and would unbuckle so ultimately we strapped her in the car seat and let Peter be in a regular seat. She even fell asleep for a few hours - and that totally helped - like a lot.
For the trip we had gotten new Kids Kindles for Peter and Olivia and I loaded it up with movies for them to watch and to prep for what was at Disneyland (including Cars and Bug's Life and Nightmare Before Christmas) - but ran into an issue in that we couldn't really hear out of the headphones even with the volume turned all the way up. Apparently this is a thing with them and sometimes if you have headphones with really long connectors it can help, but still, not great. Definitely something I wish we had tested out before the flights. They did have coloring books and we packed a ton of snacks so that helped.
All-in-all, the flight wasn't too bad - and certainly not as bad as I feared. After landing in San Diego we went to retrieve our one checked bag and then I had to figure out where the pick-up was for Budget Rental Car (all of the rental car locations are off site at the San Diego Airport). Finally found where the rental car shuttles pick up was but there wasn't a dedicated spot for any individual ones so just waitng and walked back and forth checking each shuttle that came in. Felt like the Budget one took a while, but eventually it showed up and then it took about 7 minutes to get there. he driver asked if anyone was a Fastbreak member, and I said I was so he radioed ahead and then I was able to just pick up my keys at the window of the building while everyone else had to go in and get in line - so that definitely helped! Our car was a Kia Sedona minivan. Never been in one, but it was pretty nice and definitely met our needs.
I went back to pick up Judi and the kids, installed all the car seats, and then we were off ....
You can get noise cancelling headphones made especially for this issue- I had that problem on an plane once. I bought adult and kid ones on Amazon for our plane trip last time and they worked beautifully! The kids ones even come in colors. And I found them to be more comfortable than regular headphones (they look like old fashion ones that go over your head instead of ear buds).
Thank you! we think we make cute kids 
rotfl
