Southwick: Our Forever Family: Quick trip...or so we thought!

This past weekend (Saturday-Sunday, April 29-30), Jeff, Danny, Jonas and I made a quick trip to AZ (that got a little longer...I'll explain later). Kate was performing in a local production of Newsies. She had worked really hard on this production. She even helped paint some of the props and made her own dress for the show! I'm grateful that we have the means to make these quick trips to show our support. There is nothing more important than family. While it wouldn't have been the end of the world if we didn't go down, it was awesome that we could. The weekend was pretty toasty so we limited our activities to what we could do indoors. To be honest, most of the time, we just spent hanging out at Nichole's house. The only real times we ventured out were to get food (at some of our favorite places). We did go to a park one morning before it got too warm. Still, I was thankful for a chill weekend. I needed it! With all the busy-ness going on in our lives sometimes I forget to schedule time to breathe! Kate's production was amazing! I was so impressed with the talent of these youth. We all really enjoyed supporting her...and just being with family. This was probably the last visit Danny would have to see Michael, Jackie, and Ryan. We were supposed to fly home on Sunday. Our flight was originally scheduled to leave around 5:00 p.m. I checked the flight status before we went to the airport and noticed that they were reporting a 2 hour delay. Ugh! Not ideal but not totally inconvenient. Thankfully, we noticed before we left to the airport so we just hung out at Nichole's house a little longer. She finally dropped us off and we zoomed through security. Hardly anyone was there. We reached our gate and they were still reporting the 2 hour delay. Less than a half hour later, we checked the website again and noted that the flight was now not scheduled to leave until the next day, Monday, May 1st at 11:00 a.m.! What?! Ok...now we're bordering inconvenient. They did give us some flight vouchers, but I honestly would have rather just gone home. Jonas, however, were totally ecstatic! Jeff was ready to rent a car and drive all night. That was definitely NOT what I wanted to do. We finally just decided to stay one more night. It wasn't a huge inconvenience especially since we had people to come pick us up, a place to stay, and we'd be home in time for Danny to make his lacrosse game. My dad came to get us and we spent one more night with them. In the morning (Monday, May 1st), I decided to check the website once again to confirm the departure time...this is when things got crazy! Now the flight wasn't leaving until 5:15 p.m. that evening. There was no way Danny would make his game. Plus, there was so much we needed to be doing at home (which is why the original plan was just to fly down for a brief 36 hours). After some quick searches for rental cars or even at least a one-way flight for Danny, my parents graciously agreed to let us use their truck to drive home and in return, we would buy them a ticket to fly up for Danny's graduation. (They were planning to drive up anyway so now they only had to drive one way. Plus, we used Danny's flight voucher since he wouldn't need it for the next two years.) We grabbed some snacks, gave some quick hugs, and hit the road! Jeff drove and I prayed all the way home. haha! He was definitely on a mission to get us there as quickly as possible. And yes, we made it back in time for the game. What a crazy ending to a chill weekend (and to this month)! I still don't regret our not-so-quick weekend!