Trip to Utah

Our family recently made a trip to Utah for my brother Chris’s wedding. It was our first time flying with all our kids. We’d flown with Gabby before when she was small but this was Samantha and Katherine’s first time.

We took the opportunity to do lots of things while we were there and we have lots of photos so this trip will be broken down into several posts.

I’ll start out with the flight out.

We thankfully had frequent flyer miles and they paid for most of our tickets. We had to buy some miles to cover all of it but it wasn’t bad at all. But, we did have to take flights that had us changing planes in Chicago both coming and going. I was a little nervous about that but the girls were – for the most part – good troopers.

To prepare for the trip I packed a carry-on bag for each of the kids full of activities and snacks: coloring books and crayons, stickers and notebooks, a couple crafts and lots of goodies. And Gabby’s class work that she was missing since she was out of school for four days.

The idea was for them each to carry their own bag and a blankie or stuffed animal and to wear their sweatshirt. I ended up with their blankies and sweatshirts to carry plus my own overly stuffed bag. Obviously I’d not travelled in a long time because my own bag was too full and too big – by the end of our flight to Utah the handles on my bag broke off! I had three books, a couple coloring books, my snacks, camera, breakfast leftovers and I’d ended up stuffing the kids blankies and sweatshirts into it too. And, I don’t know how much reading I was thinking I’d get done! Lesson learned!

So we all had carry-ons (5 total) plus personal items (2 unicorns, 3 sweatshirts, 3 blankies and Alan’s laptop), plus a car seat for Katherine, plus a booster seat and a stroller that we checked at the gate.

We decided to bring a booster seat with us because the car rental place was going to charge us more than the cost of a new booster seat to rent one for the few days we were there. Ridiculous!

The stroller was wonderful to have. Gabby decided that the straps on her carry-on were hurting her so the stroller ended up transporting Katherine, Katherine’s carry-on and blankies, Gabby’s carry-on, our bag that held breakfast (which turned into my carry-on on the way home), and before the trip was through, Katherine’s car seat balanced on top. When Katherine wanted to walk instead it carried either Samantha or the booster seat.

I should have taken a picture now that I think of it!

I’m sure we looked quite funny!

Katherine did pretty well in her car-seat. It was nice to have a harness to strap her down and she was comfortable in it. She slept for part of the flight and didn’t fight too much to get out until near the end of each flight when she’d had enough and wanted to run.

Thankfully we had a little time in Chicago to let her run a bit. Of course, she and Alan discovered an escalator near our gate and she didn’t want to get off of it when it was time to board the next flight. That caused some frustration for Alan who’s job it was to chase her, screaming from Katherine, and worried look’s on fellow passengers as they saw this crazy family about to board their flight. But, once buckled in, Katherine was better. Plus, I have to admit, the lollipops I packed helped a ton!

Here are some pictures of us on the plane keeping busy:

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought this was a fun picture too. I was taking a picture of my very busy tray but we were having some turbulence at the time:

 

Gabby and Samantha enjoyed switching places so they could take turns at the window. Gabby liked looking out the window after take-off and seeing the small cars and houses below. Samantha was afraid of it and needed someone to hold her hand but I think that wore off by the time we flew home but she still didn’t like to have the window open. My favorite part of flying was the take-off. I told the girls it was kind of like a roller coaster because it goes really fast.

I don’t know when we’ll be able to fly again but I learned some lessons with this one. You always need to have at least one try to know what works and what doesn’t. Next time, get along with less. I ended up packing a lot of the stuff we carried on into our checked luggage for the flight home. It still felt like we had a lot of stuff to carry but it wasn’t as bad. Hey, three kids, you’re gonna have lots to carry…it’s the nature of the beast.