Mimi & Grampy Are Here!!!

Christmas may still be a day or two away, but L and N got their Christmas present early. Last night Mimi and Grampy arrived from the North Pole... or rather from Maine, which is pretty much the same thing.

Sounds like it was a challenging sleigh ride. They left Portland, Maine at 6:05am Tuesday morning, getting into Newark without incident. They got their boarding passes issued for their flight to LA, but they weren't able to board because the plane was stuck in Florida with mechanical problems. They sat in Newark for six hours until their plane arrived. When they were finally called for boarding they waited through the line, and as they ran their boarding passes through the scanner all the alarms went off and the SWAT team descended en masse. Actually, the boarding agent just asked them to step out of the line, which is pretty much the same thing.

Evidently in the six hours they were milling about the Newark airport their tickets and reservations were cancelled. The agents tried to give them a hard time, saying that they must have cancelled their flight on line or something a few days before and they weren't going to be allowed on the flight. Fortunately the previous gate attendant of six hours earlier had checked them in and stamped their boarding pass, confirming that they had been good six hours earlier. Confronted with their own evidence, they semi-relented and put them at the head of the stand-by list. If a group of six hadn't failed to show up for the flight, Mimi and Grampy would have been stuck in purgatory until the end of time, or rather Newark, which is pretty much the same thing.

But arrive, they did, at 7:24pm California time (10:24pm Maine time), after sixteen hours of dealing with our celebrated travel industry. (I could mention the airline by name, but we all know they're generally interchangeable in terms of their stellar service.)

L and N had been spastic all day long, getting more and more frantic as the delays mounted. As we bundled up to head to LAX (the Los Angeles airport so named for its security -- Ha ha, yes I use that same joke over and over), the kids went into hyper-gibberish, bouncing from wall to wall, chittering and chattering like a movie in fast-forward. We waited at the baggage claim until the magic moment when an exhausted Mimi and Grampy descended the escalator like the royalty they are. Many squeals and hugs and kisses on both sides. L and N were quick to grab the bags (which mercifully arrived intact) and helped them to the car. The chittering lasted all the way home until we all collapsed in a dilapidated heap in our beds.