July 9th – After non-stop packing for days, we were finally nearing the finish line. Our flight to Paris was at 6pm on Thursday, July 10th, and we’ve still got more to pack up and put into storage, and then finally finish packing our luggage for the trip.
I left my least favorite room – the kitchen – for last. Dozens of dishes, glasses, and other odds and ends still needed to be wrapped and stored safely in boxes, and moved to our storage room. Luckily, my parents volunteered to help.
Around 6pm on Wednesday (24 hours till our flight took off) both my parents came over and got to work wrapping dish by dish, glass by glass. Adam was still packing his “man room” so it was just 3 of us tackling the kitchen. We finished the kitchen, surprisingly efficiently, in about 2 hours! What a relief! It would have taken me all night to do it myself! Thank you mama and papa!!
Once they left, Adam and I finished up the last of our odds and ends, wound up staying up till 3am before deciding to call it a night and head over to my parents for a few hours of sleep. Needless to say, we were out cold once our heads hit the pillows. Waking up at 6am on the 10th, we went back over to our house to load up my mom’s van and the lexus with the last load of boxes.
We cut it incredibly close, locking the storage room for the last time till December around noon or 1pm, and then back over to the house to pack up our bags. We decided to travel as lightly as possible, each of us only bringing 3 bags – an Osprey convertible wheeled bag, the day pack that came with the Osprey bag, and one other bag (for me a large purse, for Adam a large lap-top messenger. Finally packed, we made it over to my parents around 3pm, just in time to leave for the airport.
We were done. Finally! (or so we thought) 6pm came around and we were on the plane ready for take off….but nope! Bad storms rolled around the area so all flights got cancelled JUST before our plane went down the runway. Here’s what it looked like for roughly 1.5 hours as we sat in our plane at Reagan Airport:
Just slightly delayed…
As you can see (or not see), visibility was no more than .25 miles. Ugh, our flight from DCA went to New York JFK before heading over to Paris. We had about 1 hr 45 min layover in NY, so I was expecting to stay the night in NY due to the delay.
We made it to NY minutes (5 or less) before the NY – Paris flight was scheduled to take off. Luckily, our next flight was in the same terminal, and we literally ran to the gate. I suppose the Paris flight was expecting us and knew our original flight was delayed, and they actually held the doors open and waited for just the 2 of us. We finally saw the gate, and the 3 flight attendants who were expecting us as they started waving at us to hurry…which we did. WE MADE IT!
Our bags on the other hand…a different story…