Joel, Jenn and Jaydon: Washington D.C. Trip

Joel had to go out of state for work: Phoenix, Arizona (where he picked up a scorpion lolipop for Jaydon as a reminder of his scorpion sting incident at Stan and Jean's). The plan was for Jaydon and I to fly out of Austin and meet Joel in Chicago for the connecting flight to D.C. It didn't quite go that way....

We went shopping at Target for some Easter presents (Shawn White cap and glasses). We are waiting in the airport in Austin for our flight to Chicago - ready to meet up with Joel to fly to DC together.

Finally a smile! Our flight from Austin to Chicago had to make an emergency landing in St. Louis. Made me wish I knew my geography better than I do so I could answer when Jaydon asked me where St. Louis was. The turbulence was the worst I've ever been in and this was the second time Jaydon had flown since our Disney World trip to Florida five years ago. The captain came on and said that all passengers and flight attendants must take their seats immediately and remain seated because we had to make an emergency landing in St. Louis. That's all we knew. We landed at 7:00 and the weather outside was dark and it had been raining. They asked us to get off and said they would let us know if the mechanics could fix it in time for us to get back on or if we would need to catch another plane. I feel for the woman making all of our new flights - everyone was staring at her. It was the first time I had flown by myself where I had to pay attention - omg! Jaydon was a little nervous and upset when he found out that we were going to miss the connecting flight to Chicago that Joel was going to be on. Turned out that we were going to wait for a new flight out to Chicago and they were putting us up in the Crowne Plaza in Chicago. We would take a flight out in the morning to DC.

We took the 28 minute flight to Chicago at 9:00 pm. The flight attendant told us that the computers were having issues that prevented us from continuing on the original plane. Everyone just sat where they wanted to. I guess I don't fly that often but stuff like this has never happened to me.

On the way out of O'Hare to go get our hotel. This was so cool - the lights changed colors like rainbows. We got our hotel voucher and directions to the hotel shuttle. (Our luggage was going on to DC so no change of clothes). We crossed three streets and walked down to where 8-10 shuttles were pulling up for various hotels. I was nervous having a child outside at 10:00 at night in a huge crowd of people - when we finally found our shuttle, we were in line but an old man acutally pushed Jaydon out of the way. He saw him but was so worried about getting on the bus he just bumped him over. Didn't say excuse me or anything. So we pull up to the hotel to see all of these people hanging around outside of the hotel with tattoos and piercings - just seemed strange that everyone was extremely inked up - until we saw the bus that said Joliet Correctional Facility. You could hear all of the older ladies gasp and wonder where they had sent us.

The atmosphere was even more diverse inside the lobby. We waited in line for the room (yea we got two double beds!) to find out from the concierge that we needed to get up at 3:30 to make the 4:00 shuttle so we could be there two hours before the 6:00am flight. Ugh! Jaydon was thrilled ;) Found out that there was a Tatoo Show being held in the hotel where all the top artists come to display their work. Kat Von D and another guy from LA Ink were there (we didn't see them) but we did see everyone else in their group getting their pre-party on before they went out. When we get down to the lobby there are still people milling around, drinks everywhere, half-eaten slices of pizza, and a unicycle. We knew that they were still partying or on their way in because our room was two feet in front of the elevators. Funny we heard them coming in but slept right through the fire alarm they pulled at 1:30 that caused the entire hotel to end up in the lobby.