Well, it sure is warming up here in England. The ducks are back on the lake (which is no longer frozen), the stores are keeping their doors propped open, and the kids are walking home from school with no gloves or hats and their jackets unzipped. Yes, my friends, it has reached the upper 40s! We are taking every small ray of sunshine we can get!
Before I can start talking about our life back in England though, I need to tell you how I got back here (I know some family members are waiting to hear this story!). Here goes...
The original plan was for me to fly Space A out of MacDill AFB in Tampa, FL. That is where I flew in to when I got to the States, and it is the closest base to my parents house. Plans changed when we had to go up to South Carolina for my grandfather's funeral. I thought, okay, after the funeral I will look at flights leaving Charleston - they have more flights going overseas than MacDill anyway, so it seemed great! However, time just kept going by and there were absolutely NO flights going to Europe. Matt had now already returned home from his deployment (yay!!!) but I was not there to welcome him back :( Luckily, we have some sweet friends that took care of him.
Anyway, as the days went on I started to feel that I needed to make a new plan - I needed to get home! A little further north, in Baltimore, Maryland, there is the BWI airport that is the rotater for Space A; meaning it has LOADS of Space A flights going everywhere. Also, it uses regular 747 planes (like normal travel airliners) instead of KC-135s, etc, which meant it would be a more comfortable flight. I saw listed on its schedule that there was a flight to Ramstein AFB,Germany in few days time and there were about 170 seats available, so I was almost promised to get on! I made the decision to go for it. I packed up all of our things and drove a rental car from Columbia, SC to Baltimore, MD (stopping the night in VA to split up the drive). At the airport, it was crazy to keep up with the girls and all of our luggage (3 check bags, 2 carry on, 2 car seats) since all of the trolleys were taken. Luckilly, there are some really amazing people in this world that helped me out, entertained the girls, and got us drink and cookies while we waited. AND somebody did eventually find a cart for me and loaded all my baggage on it for me :) . The names were called and we made the flight!!
On the airplane, Ainsley was passed out before the dinner cart came by. Myla put on "Brave" and eventually fell asleep herself. All in all, I really couldn't complain. We slept pretty well and woke up to a beautiful sunny sky over Germany. Myla and I ate a yummy breakfast while Ainsley slept on and the captain notified us that we were starting our descent. This is when my super-easy Space A travel took a turn. The captain came back on saying that, because of weather and ice, we were not able to land at Ramstein at that time and that we may need to fly to Frankfurt (airport about an hours drive away) to land instead. We circled above Ramstein for about 45 min. The captain came back on and told us that we were going to fly to Munich to land instead. Munich is about a 5 hour drive away from Ramstein so most of the people on the plane were pretty uspet by this news, why weren't we just landing at Frankfurt? I didn't care either way, because I needed to get a plane to London and I could do that from either of the two airports.
Finally, we landed at Munich BUT the captain came on AGAIN saying they were trying to figure something out for us to get the people to Ramstein. At this moment I'm thinking, "
please, just let me off this plane!!!" We sat on the plane for 2 HOURS unable to get off. Captain then comes back on saying, okay, we are flying to Frankfurt now and there will be buses there to take anyone to Ramstein who needs to go. ((Deep breaths, deep breaths...) I guess I should mention that Myla and Ainsley were definitely awake by now and not happy to be strapped into a chair still. Also, the flight had only planned on dinner and breakfast...so no food after that...
Plane refueled, we take off...land in Frankfurt maybe 45 min later. By now it is dark outside but I am just so happy to be getting off the plane. I go to get my bags and encounter another problem...this time there are plenty of trolleys, but it cost 1 euro to get it, and there are NO atms around!! And guess who didn't have any euros? This girl :) I start asking around to see if there is a coin machine, and I met a little bit of a language barrier in the process, not to mention I am still battling with my two toddlers. This is when yet another wonderful person takes pity on me, and pays for my trolley with their own money. Isn't it amazing that such a little thing to one person can be such a big miracle to someone else??
Got a trolley, got my bags, but now it is so late that there are no more flights going out....insert ugly cry face lol. This is where Matt steps in and becomes my superhero! He finds a hotel for me and tells me that there should be a shuttle coming soon that will take me there. I finally find the bus terminal and I walk up to the booth (with my girls and giant pile of luggage on the trolley - just for mental image), it is snowing out side and the ground is icy. I ask the lady, "Is there a shuttle coming for My Place Hotel?" She replies that she doesn't know, you have to call them first. Then, a voice from behind me says, "Ms Gardner?" I was shocked! A man was already outside waiting for me with a van to take me to the hotel. He told me to just get inside the car with my kids and he would take care of all the bags. At the hotel, he brings all my bags up to the room, tells me to go and relax and whatnot, I can come check in whenever I am ready. I just want to mention, at this point I have not given him ID, not paid him any money, nothing. When the girls and I finally came down they were all like, please sit down and have dinner! So we did :) and it was seriously AMAZING! This is just what I needed after a horrible day. I used their computer to book an early flight to London the next morning and we all went to bed (all three of us slept in the bed together, and the girls were totally awesome about it).
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| Ainsley eating dinner at My Place Hotel |
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| Myla sipping some milk at My Place Hotel |
The rest of the story ended pretty well. The 5am shuttle took me back to the airport and we got on the flight (even though I had to do some rearranging with my bags - they are super strict about their baggage weight so I ended up shoving a lot of random things in my diaper bag). I was sooo happy to land in London. The last little hiccup happened at London customs - they couldn't find my fingerprints in the system so they had to do some paperwork and I sat and waited some more (just to make sure my nightmare was complete) but finally I made it through! My wonderful husband was there to pick us up and drive us home!!! On arriving back at our house, we made some delicious orange cinnamon rolls and, per Myla's request, built a huge snowman.
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| My big helper! |
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| Myla adding her own touches |
A little video of them having fun in the snow:
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| So happy to be back together! |
