Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Week 51- The Passport Shuffle

December 16th-22nd.

On Monday night, Brad realized that my passport had expired back in April. Our flight was set to leave for Nova Scotia on Saturday. That gave us 4 business days to try to figure something out. Needless to say, some tears were shed as I tried to imagine how I would tell my mother (who was at that very moment posting Facebook statuses about how excited she was to see us) that we weren't going to make it. After lots of Googling, scrambling, and praying, the Canadian Consulate in Atlanta gave me an early Christmas Miracle by approving a temporary passport for me. We had to rush to Atlanta on Wednesday morning to apply in person, and we had to drive back on Friday to pick it up in person. Thankfully, our flight was leaving from Atlanta on Saturday, so we were able to spend the night at Ben and Nancy's house. I am still shaking my head at this whole preventable fiasco. Needless to say, we'll be extra sensitive to passport expiry dates for the rest of our lives. I wish I had pictures to share of this Amazing Race, but the whole thing is kind of a blur, and I have no photo evidence that it ever happened.

Saturday, we woke up early, and we were anxious to get on the road in the air, but our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 5 p.m. That turned into 6 p.m. We got to Toronto too little too late to make our connection back to Sydney that night. Par for the course when it comes to holiday travel-- especially holiday travel up north where you're not only dealing with heavy travel traffic but also unpredictable weather. I was excited to see that my uncle Raymond was waiting for us once we got through customs, and he helped me stay calm as Brad got us re-booked. We were very lucky that we got pushed through to Halifax that same night (even though it was really late and we just wanted to sleep) because ZERO flights got out of Toronto the next day. Air Canada put us up in the airport hotel upon our arrival at 2 a.m., and by 2:30 we were all fast asleep. Our new flight to Sydney was scheduled to leave at 10:45 a.m. on Sunday, and thankfully, we had no further delays.

We waited as patiently as we possibly could at this point.

Thank you, Ipad video app.
Watching for our airplane with Daddy.
Waiting for our boarding call with Mommy.
Once we arrived back on the island, Mom was waiting for us with a taxi in tow. She says she was so worried we weren't going to be able to land because we were flying into some bad weather. Thankfully, that was not the case, and we made it back to 291 Champlain in one piece and no worse for the wear.

We arrived to hugs, kisses, and happy faces.

Bonding with cousin Tessa over a pink guitar.
So many kisses from Auntie Laura!


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