14 Hours

Well, we finally made it to the Dominican Republic. Our adventure didn't end at the Wyndham in Miami though. We got on the plane the next day followed by a maintenance man! I thought KC might physically throw him off the plane. And just as we are settling in the 2 flight attendants start yelling at each other. And by yelling I don't mean bickering, I mean full use of the seven words you can't say on television. These are also words that should not be used on an airplane, with passengers. A flight attendant from the other cabin actually had to remind them that they are adults and should act like it. While entertaining I was worried it might screw up our flight even more if they had to get a new flight attendant. I considered offering to serve the drinks myself if we could just get off the ground.

I wish I could say this was the end of our travel adventures but I can't. There are alot of things that happened in between and I will post lots of pictures later. Sam had quite a few firsts in the Dominican.

Getting Home (this is where the 14 hours comes in)

We arrive at the Punta Cana airport the recommended 3 hours early and can immediately see why. The line to check is at least 100 people long. Priority check in and $10 allowed us to skip right to the front. (yep, we were those people). Apparently traveling with a baby in the Dominican (and $7) also gets you to the front of the security line. Now we were in the terminal with a mere 2.5 hours to spare, or so we thought...

After eating some questionable pizza and trying to choke down a Coca-cola Lite (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH DIET COKE) we settle into our gate. The Palsky's are called to board and we say our good-bye's convinced that we will shortly be on an air conditioned plane drinking a real diet coke. Hah! 2 hours and 15 minutes later we actually are getting on a plane. In that 2 hours I think I lost a small amount of my patience and sanity. We have now been at the airport for over 4 hours! Finally we are headed to Miami praying that 1.5 hours is enough time to make our connection.

We land in Miami and take off running. We need to go through customs, pick up our luggage, recheck it to Dallas, go through security again, and get to our gate. We make it to our gate with 30 minutes to spare. That's 30 minutes based on our original departure time. Our flight is running a little behind based on some bad weather. We think no problem after all of this trouble what's 20 minutes? We get a few drinks and think we'll eat something on the plane. All of the sudden it's lightening and the announcement comes on that the Miami airport is shut down until the weather passes. WHAT???? You have got to be kidding me! Do you people see us over here? We're the ones with a baby that has been a real trooper but we can only push it so far. We feed Sam. We walk Sam. We play with Sam. We rock Sam. Any patience or sanity I had left at this point is gone. And to top things off - it's hot in our terminal. It's Miami, turn the A/C up people! We did make it to Dallas that night so you would think that our adventure was over, but somehow it still gets "better".

After finally landing at DFW about 1am we hightail it to the baggage claim. My sweet Dad is there to pick us up. As the luggage starts to come off it hits us. We left the car seat between customs and the recheck of our baggage in Miami. If you happened to be at terminal D at DFW in the middle of the night on Saturday I was the lady holding a baby and bawling at baggage claim D29. We are now finally home but have no way to get there without pulling a Brittany.

We run to Wal-mart and pick up the first car seat we see. And then finally about 2am we hit our front door.

Door to door: 14 hours. I can honestly say I have never been so happy to be home.