Tijuana/San Diego - Day 8

Today was a most horrible day. Not the most horrible day I have ever had, but one that ranks in the top 5. We got out of bed at 4:30am and I could immediately tell that my stomach was upset. Three trips to the bathroom and a bunch of Imodium and Pepto later, I was somewhat ready to go. Sandra had the kids up and dressed Xander. We had decided not to change Evan's clothes, but as we left the hotel room with the first load of luggage, I could feel that his clothes were soaking wet. There wasn't time to do anything about that, as we were already late for the 5:00am shuttle, which we ended up missing. When it returned, I helped the driver load our luggage while Sandra secured the car seats. We were finally off, though there were other people on the shuttle, so we did not go straight to our terminal, and it was 5:30am by the time we got to the United terminal.

A couple of United employees brought over a luggage cart, loaded our luggage on it, and walked it up to the ticket counter. We quickly discovered that despite assurances from the United employee in Edmonton that the ticket problem had been taken care of, it had not. Their computer still said we had paper tickets and this employee was not going to let us board, and as there isn't an Air Canada ticket counter in San Diego, we would have been stranded. I had to stand there holding a wet, stinky baby, as he and Sandra discussed the problem. Finally, he asked if we had our boarding cards from the trip down. Luckily, as Sandra never throws anything away, we did. He found the ticket number on the cards and got us on the planes. I was left wondering how their computer system works, since it sounded like he could not search for us by name, but he could search for us by ticket number, and once he found us in the computer, all was good.

All of this meant that we were getting to be late for our flight. We stopped outside security so that I could change Evan, as I did not want to unload all our stuff while juggling a wet baby. Security took some time, but there were no problems - Xander even walked through on his own without any prompting. Once aboard the flight, we settled in and took off. There were no real problems with the flight (except my stomach) until we started to land in Denver. The seatbelt light went on early and there was no friendly announcement that there might be turbulence, so I figured that meant there was going to be turbulence, and I was right. Thunderstorms were moving through the area and the landing was extremely rough - the plane bounced around, turned a couple of times and then Xander threw up. We couldn't call a stewardess, due to the turbulence, so Sandra tried to clean him up as best she could with one of Evan's spit up blankets, while we waited for the plane to land. Once on the ground, we stopped outside the terminal, as we were 20 minutes early, so our gate was occupied for the next 20 minutes. That left us sitting on the plane with a sick, stinky child. At least the lack of movement allowed us to contact a stewardess, get a plastic bag and change Xander's clothes.

Once we were finally off the plane, we went to a washroom, cleaned everyone up, got a muffin for Xander and Sandra to eat and went to wait for our next flight. The problems continued once we boarded, as once we got onboard, a thunderstorm passed over the airport and they closed the ramp, which meant that we sat there for almost an hour waiting for the rain and fairly large hail to stop falling. After that long wait, we got in the air and flew to Winnipeg, where the landing was a bit rough, likely just because our nerves were raw and we were sitting near the very back of the airplane.

We were the last ones off the plane, and as we were heading towards the elevator, another flight arrived, so a United employee took us to a different elevator to get down to customs. I'm not certain that helped, as we ended up last in line behind two airplanes worth of people. Evan was quite tired at this point, so someone had to hold him, which made for a very long line. At long last, we went through customs, where we collected our checked baggage and, once again, left the secure area. ARRRGGHHH! Why can't these airports design it so that you don't have to leave a secure area and go back through security once you have cleared customs? With four carry-on bags, liquids, a laptop, two digital cameras, two kids and two strollers, it takes forever to unpack everything, go through security and then repack everything.

So, we dragged all the checked baggage, as well as the carry on and two kids all the way to the Air Canada ticket counter, where they took our checked bags and gave us new boarding passes. We then went up to security, dumped out all the water bottles we had purchased for ourselves and for Evan's formula, went back through security, bought new bottles of water, changed the kid's diapers and got on the last airplane of the day.

I had hoped to let Evan sleep while sitting around in Winnipeg, but due to the long customs line and the security hassle, there wasn't time, so he was extremely tired once we got on the plane, and he started screaming immediately. Now Evan doesn't cry - he just lets loose with loud, blood-curdling screams, and this was not a large aircraft. Luckily Sandra was able to force him to go to sleep, and we took off. Xander fell asleep while the plane taxied and did not wake up until we landed in Regina. Evan slept the entire time as well, so the final flight was fairly uneventful, except that we were early again, so our gate was occupied when we arrived. That one confused me, as there was only one plane at the Regina airport at that time. I guess they only use one gate.

In Regina, we met Mom and Dad, overheard comments from the other passengers regarding the lucky fact that "the baby had fallen asleep, or the flight would have been awful", got our luggage and drove home.

Thus ends our adventure in Mexico.