September 23, 2016

Another peachy visit (despite a rough start) – Georgia 2016

Posted in Milestones, Travel, Visits at 5:28 pm by annabeckley

For our first couple of years in Portland, PaJoe and Embo made the trip out here with Granddaddy and Bubbie. When the springtime visit came up again this year, though, the great grandparents (understandably) decided that the cross-country trip was just a bit too much for them. They still wanted to see us, and knew that finances were our main obstacle, so they decided that Embo’s 90th birthday gift to herself would be to fly our family to Georgia for a summer visit! Ella, Katie and I had been to Georgia in June 2013, just before we moved to Portland. Gary hadn’t been since back when we lived in Nashville, and Emily had never been before – so we were all definitely due for some lakeside fun. We gratefully accepted PaJoe & Embo’s offer, and started looking for the best timing for our visit.

We ended up booking plane tickets for July 21st through the 28th, which would allow Gary a few days between returning to Oregon and returning to work at Holy Trinity, and worked best for my Dad and Holly, who planned to meet us in Georgia.

While Gary and I have each traveled with our big girls, and I have flown with Emily, this was our first trip as a family of five. I was a bit nervous about the cross-country trip with all three girls – Ella and Katie hadn’t been on a trip that long since we moved here from the east coast 3 years ago, and Emily had never traveled that far. We put a lot of thought into what we packed for the trip and (perhaps more importantly) for the carry-on bags full of snacks and entertainment, and just crossed our fingers that all would go smoothly.

Here’s how Emily and Katie woke up on travel day:

and here’s Emily trying on her ‘puddle jumper’ life vest before I packed it in the suitcase:

I had taken a picture of this pile of stuff a few days before we left, because it just made me laugh…I had asked the big girls to help me pack their ‘airplane backpack,’ to be filled with lightweight, small, portable, quiet, good airplane toys for each of them. Katie selected an etch-a-sketch, two rubber ducks, a wind up toy, a selection of alphabots, a few pieces from a board game, and a photo album. Don’t worry, I helped her to refine her backpack contents just a bit ;)

Kristin was taking us to the airport in our car, so we picked her up on Thursday morning with our car packed to the max, leaving plenty of time before our 10:15am flight. We would have an hour long layover and plane change in Oakland, then the long flight to Atlanta, which would land at 8:30pm local time – just in time to rent our car, drive to my Aunt Anne & Uncle Clay’s house, and get the girls to bed close to their normal bedtime (when considered in pacific time, anyway).

Kristin dropped us off at the airport, we unloaded our three children, three car/booster seats, three suitcases, five carry-on bags, and umbrella stroller, gave our goodbye hugs, and headed inside to get in line.

Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans.

While I had confirmed that all of our travels were on time before we left the house, while in line I received an email from Southwest telling me that our flight from Oakland to Atlanta had been cancelled. Not delayed — cancelled. I had thoughts ranging from “this can’t be happening” to “obviously they’ll just put us on another flight” to “how am I going to call my Grandma and tell her we’re NOT COMING after months of looking forward to this visit??” I got really mad at the airline, I calmed myself down, I might have cried a little bit…and this emotional roller coaster was all taking place while Gary and I coaxed three squirmy girls (along with the stroller, suitcases, and carry-on bags) through the twisting, winding, snail’s pace line to the ticket counter.

So we got to the front of the line, and we could tell from the lady’s face as she clicked away on her computer that it wasn’t good news. There was no way to get us to Atlanta anytime soon (as in, not for several days). What about another airline? No, they don’t do that. So I started scrambling…what about other cities? Could you get us to another city nearby and we could rent our car from there and drive to Atlanta? I mentioned Nashville just because I happen to know that it’s about a 4 hour drive. Her face showed a glimmer of hope as she looked at her screen – “we could get you to Nashville tomorrow…the flight would land at 11:15pm.”

“So,” I clarified with barely suppressed rage, “you’re telling me that I have to call my sister-in-law who just got all the way back to Beaverton, tell her to turn around and come pick us up, have her bring us back here again tomorrow, travel all day with three small children, land close to midnight in a different city (different state!) than originally planned, then drive into the wee hours of the morning in order to reach our originally planned destination…two days later than we were supposed to?”

Poker face airline worker: “Yes. Oh but you’ll need to contact the rental car company to make sure that they’ll have the vehicle you need in Nashville, we can’t guarantee that.” “But I booked the rental car through your website, with the same itinerary as the flights.” “Doesn’t matter – we can’t guarantee it.”

I’m getting bored (and angry all over again!) re-living all of the details, so let’s just say that there was a supervisor that got involved to confirm the rental car availability (he gave me his personal cell phone number but then spent the rest of the day dodging my calls…he answered when Gary called from his phone), hours were spent on hold with airline customer service (literally 6+ hours) only to be told that I actually need to call customer relations, it’s a separate number, and no they can’t transfer me….it was just a really unpleasant day. BUT – it has to be said that the girls did really well, all things considered. Gary took them and all our stuff to a bench off to the side while I was ‘clarifying things’ with the people at the counter and waiting, waiting, waiting for some sort of resolution to our situation.

Good sport Kristin turned right around and came back to the airport once we knew for sure that we weren’t going to be able to fly out that day. As it turns out, she and GiGi had planned to meet Joe for lunch that day, so we just went with them since our schedule had opened up for the day. Here are the girls at lunch, laughing at videos of them riding their bikes:

It’s really odd to come home when you’ve expected to be going on vacation. We couldn’t unpack because we were leaving the following day, and we didn’t have many groceries in the house, so we just unpacked and repacked only what we needed (toothbrushes, contact lens cases, etc) and dug out a frozen pizza to make for dinner.

The following day, we met Kristin at the zoo, where she and GiGi had spent the morning with the kids, and she drove us to the airport. Many jokes about deja vu and “hope we don’t see you again today!” were made :) This time, we made it past security – yay! Here we are having a little lunch before our flight to Phoenix (our layover spot on the way to Nashville):

all smiles on the way to Phoenix:

walking to our gate in Phoenix:

aaaand, delayed again. Our Phoenix to Nashville flight was delayed three separate times, each one longer and more frustrating than the last. As we kept saying, it wouldn’t have been so bad if we’d known about the actual departure time to begin with – we could have eaten at a sit-down restaurant and set up camp at an empty gate to let the kids run around. As it was, we kept having 30 and 40 minute chunks of time to fill, never wanting to stray too far from the gate since we would be “boarding soon”…so we ended up with a frustrating dinner of scones and bad overpriced sandwiches from Starbucks, and sort of wandered aimlessly in search of open outlets to charge the iPads.

The girls did really well through all of this, though they were just being normal kids – unable to sit still, always in everybody else’s way, impatient, tired from traveling (with our longest flight still to come!). I kept texting our family back in Oregon and our waiting family in the southeast…we hadn’t yet decided whether we would drive straight to Tate from the Nashville airport or stop at my Dad & Holly’s house to get some rest first – the longer the evening went on, the more we leaned toward the latter.

I also kept calling the rental car company in Nashville, because I was worried that they would be closed when we arrived…they assured me that they would stay open 30 minutes past the arrival of the latest plane.

Here are the girls at our ‘iPad charging station,’ and the sea of people affected by weather delays in Phoenix that evening:watching luggage being loaded in Phoenix before we boarded:

sleepy girl on her first cross-country flight:

finding our way to the rental car counter in Nashville, about 3am local time:

Our Jeep rental, jam packed with suitcases and sleepy girls:

We crept into my Dad & Holly’s house as quietly as we could, but they all heard us (Holly’s sister Penny was staying there as well) and came out to give us hugs before we went to sleep.

We were able to get about 4 or 5 hours of much-needed sleep, and spent a few hours visiting with Granddaddy, Bubbie, and Penny. 

The silver lining to our change in destination city was getting to spend this bit of time with Holly – she had just had hip replacement surgery a few days beforehand, and she wasn’t going to be able to make the trip down to Georgia. We were really glad to have a chance to visit with her, and I know she was glad too.

Penny made us all a delicious breakfast of fruit, eggs, bacon, and grits (a real welcome to the south!) – it was the perfect relaxing morning after our travels.

My Dad left Holly in Penny’s capable hands, and we hit the road at about noon to get down to Georgia. Gary and Ella decided to join Granddaddy in his car, so I had the younger girls with me in our rental car. After a quick coffee stop at the Italian Market near St. Ann (where Gary used to teach, and where Ella was baptized), we hopped on the interstate.

A couple hours into the journey, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel for lunch – another perfect welcome to the south :) We all enjoyed some delicious comfort food and outdoor giant checkers in iconic rocking chairs, then got back on the road (Katie decided to join the party in Granddaddy’s car, so it was just me and Emily in the rental).

We stopped at a gas station on our way out of the Cracker Barrel, and Gary hopped out of my Dad’s car and came over to help me with our car. I had to laugh and take a quick picture when the girls shouted over to us “why is Daddy getting our gas??” (they’re used to Oregon, where we stay in the car and gas station attendants take care of everything :))

There was one last coffee stop before driving up the mountain (we were tired people!) – here’s Granddaddy with his three girls:

We finally arrived at Tate just before dinnertime – here we are catching up with Helen, Clay, and Anne:

Embo and Helen getting some ice cream (with Georgia peaches) ready for dessert:

weary travelers sleeping in on Sunday morning:

The next few days were full of lots of swimming in the lake, reading and playing at home, making music, sharing delicious food, and spending great quality time with wonderful family. Rather than going through a daily ‘play by play,’ I’ll just say – enjoy this long series of pictures and videos :)

(most are my pictures, a few are my Dad’s, and the ones that are obviously from a good, non-phone camera are my from Dad’s cousin Semmes)

(there’s no such thing as “too many” pictures of kids eating watermelon, right? I hope not :))

my girls posing on the same board that I would walk across every summer as a little girl, for my Dad to take an annual picture of me:

lovebirds Anne & Clay, who got married at Tate a few decades ago:

bedtime stories with Granddaddy and Embo:

Getting to know Uncle Walter’s dog, Tanook:

Almost 68 years married, and still adorably in love!

playing on the hammock with Alston and Julie, who got married at Tate earlier this month!

first Monopoly game for the girls!

My Uncle Doug and Aunt Libby arrived at Tate in time for dinner on Tuesday, so we had a few hours to visit with them before driving to Atlanta. We knew that we wanted to spend a day in Atlanta to get some more time with Anne & Clay (they’d left Tate before we did) and to visit Stride Ahead, the barn where Anne works. We’d originally thought we might head to Atlanta on Monday evening to give us two full days in Atlanta – perhaps try to visit the Georgia Aquarium or see some other Atlanta sights. But once our arrival was delayed, we decided to forget about the aquarium and spend some more time at Tate.

Our drive to Atlanta was pretty late at night, so the girls slept in on Wednesday, then woke up for a little breakfast at Anne & Clay’s house.

All of the girls – Katie especially – loved spending time with the dogs, Zoey and Raz:

After breakfast, we got dressed and drove over to Stride Ahead to meet Anne and Helen and visit with the horses.

Anne showed the girls how to ‘introduce themselves’ to the horses (letting them smell their hands) and let the girls help to lead one of the horses out to some open space to play.

Anne let the girls have a brief ride on Brubeck, one of her horses that she’s had for many years (incidentally, Brubeck is a descendant of Secretariat!). Ella and Katie got to help get Brubeck all ready, and selected helmets for their turn being led around the ring.

Emily said ‘thanks but no thanks’ to the riding, but she enjoyed watching and giving Brubeck a pat afterward:

The girls helped Anne to make a little ‘thank you and good job’ treat for Brubeck:

After the barn, we went to a local pizza place for some delicious (giant!) pieces of pizza for lunch:

Later that day, PaJoe and Embo came over to Anne & Clay’s, and the eight of us drove to a cute restaurant in Decatur where we met Helen for dinner.

enjoying our last evening in Atlanta on Anne & Clay’s porch:

little Emily getting goodbye kisses from the original Emily :)

This trip included the revival of a fun tradition that I remembered from my childhood visits to Tate – the Secret Government Flying Team. My Dad would tell bedtime stories to me and my cousins involving the adventures of the Secret Government Flying Team – he included lots of fun details and even did special voices – I remembered loving it so much, I asked if he would tell some stories to the girls. So he made up a SGFT adventure at Notre Dame Stadium while we were at Tate, and another one on Alcatraz for our last night in Atlanta – PaJoe and Embo enjoyed the final storytime too:

A couple of final pictures – me and Helen, and me with my Dad and grandparents:

On Thursday morning, we returned our rental car and the girls got to enjoy one last ride on the super fun train at the Atlanta airport:

The girls did really well on our travels home, which (thank goodness!) were completely on time and free of drama :) Here’s Emily enjoying some stickers on one of our flights:

and here we are waiting for Uncle Joe to pick us up back in Portland:

We had such an amazing time at Tate and in Atlanta – it’s hard to describe just how much it meant to watch my girls experience so many special things that I remember fondly from my own childhood, and to see how much that meant to my Dad and my grandparents as well.

So many thank yous are due to our wonderful family for their roles in making our trip successful…thank you to Joe and Kristin for the rides to and from the airport (sorry it was 4 trips instead of 2!), thank you to Granddaddy and Bubbie for letting us crash at your house for a few hours (and to Bubbie for ‘loaning’ her caretaker to us for a few days), thank you to Anne and Clay for hosting us in Atlanta, thank you to all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins who made time to see us while we were in Georgia, and last but most certainly not least, a huge thank you to PaJoe and Embo for their incredibly generous gift of making this trip possible! We are SO grateful, I know that our girls made wonderful memories that will last a lifetime.

Despite a less than ideal start to our trip, I’d say that our first vacation as a family of five was definitely a success!

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