One Year Ago Sept. 9th

Wow! It is one year ago today that we were rushing around to leave for EUROPE! We were all up early and getting things ready to go. After Jack, Briana, Landon, and I had done all that we were to do and Mom was saying we were in her way, Dad took us over to see Gavin before we left. (That was two days after he got home from the hospital.) My siblings and I were with him for about 2 hours. When we came home and Mom was rushing around doing this and that. We got to Amber’s late for lunch, which was Honey Baked Chicken, rice, green beans, bread, butter, and jelly, applesauce, and cake for desert. It was a great meal, thank you Amber!

My cousin Kenton drove us down to Baltimore Airport (BWI), dropped us off and our adventure began! We went right up to check in because there was no line, they took our hold bag and weighed the other bags. Next they checked our bags. We all had to take off our shoes, belts, hats, etc. and put them on the scanner and then we walked through a medal detecter. After all that we were through and we could go and WAIT! We got there 2 hours early, our plane was due to leave at 7pm so we had a total of 1 1/2 hours to wait yet! It went very fast, Jack and I really could not believe this was real. (I don’t think anyone of us did.) While we waited, Dad charged his phone, Mom took pictures, Jack, read on a kindle, Bria and Landon watched the clock and watched out the window to see our plane come rolling up; I too, watched, read, and walked around. Actually we all walked around, I think.

Finally after a long time, the plane came in! It was purple with big white letters, WOW, on it just like I wanted. We got to watch the men unload/load the luggage and do the preflight check. When it was our groups turn to get on the plane, after the intro speech, they said that anyone with children could board first. We got to be the very first on the plane! We heaved our bags into the compartments above our heads and sat down as the rush of people came on.

It was so exciting to be flying to Iceland that I could not hold still. The flight attendants, wearing purple dresses and purple hats that say WOW, went through all the emergency procedures: how to use the life jacket, if the plane would not be able to hold pressure how to put on oxygen masks, and where all the exits were. Soon we were going faster and faster and faster. Then we were in the air!! After that we were told we could take off our seat belts, In flight the flight attendants come by with food; I will just say on that subject, expensive.

The seats in the WOW airplane are very close together so one doesn’t get much leg room. It was very hard to sleep on the plane. I tried for a little while and finally got to sleep, but not for very long. Then at 6am in the morning Icelandic time (12pm US time), we landed in ICELAND! We were all very, very, tired. It was raining and snowing and the temp. was low 40s when we landed.

End of day one and the very beginning of the second day.