Rowe News: Holiday Craziness ... and Fun!

Standby travel at the holidays is a challenge if everything goes right. But what happens when the Pacific Northwest gets once-in-a-generation snowfall, Oahu loses power and it's Christmas? The whole family braved a blizzard to get to the airport for a flight to Portland to spend an early Christmas with the Rowes. Miraculously, we made it both to the airport and on the flight. Dave's mom met us at the airport and we headed to Anne and Jeff's house for a 3.5 day visit ... or so we thought.

Everything was great as always at the Rowe/Watters house. We once again kicked Anne and Jeff out of their bedroom (thank you!!). Daisy and Chloe played with Ellie non-stop and the Christmas extravaganza went on without a hitch.

Then the snow fell. And fell. And fell. And fell. On an average Sunday, 465 flights go in and out of Portland. The Sunday in question saw a grand total of 20! Katie, Jason, Dave and I were all supposed to be leaving Monday. Katie had a 6 am flight that finally left sometime in the late afternoon. Jason had a series of cancellations but somehow got home. Dave had the jumpseat on his flight to Detroit and also made it out after a lengthy delay.

Ellie and I had planned on taking the train to Seattle on Monday, but they were all canceled. Tuesday had 2 running. We could have gotten on one of them, but spending $300 for a super deluxe suite for a 3 hour trip seemed a bit much. So we stayed on until Wednesday evening when we finally made it up (oh, and the 3 hour trip took 5 hours, but I digress) to see the Frankels.

We were supposed to fly to Hawaii from Seattle on Friday, but the weather and travel delays made it quite risky to actually get back to Detroit in time to prep for next semester and get Ellie back into the daycare routine. So we stayed in Kent until Monday, when we lucked out with a whole row to ourselves on the flight back home. Of course I had planned on a few days in Hawaii, so my sundress and capris were sad reminders of the missed portion of our trip. We'll get there soon, though!

The extra time in Washington allowed us to celebrate Maile's 3rd birthday with her at a super creative (no shock there!) Nesting Doll party. A good time was certainly had by all. And we learned a valuable lesson: next time we want to standby to Hawaii, we'll do it when there aren't as many time and travel constraints - summer anyone?? We are so disappointed to have missed that leg; but the universe seemed to be telling us something: from the weather, to the blackout, to Ellie's (and now my) furiously leaking nose, things were certainly against us!