Here we are all packed up and ready to go!
Another great benefit that Disney offers is checking your luggage for you from the resort and printing your boarding passes. This saves a lot of time at the airport so we thought we would give it a try. We figured if our luggage gets lost, at least we will be back home!
We boarded the Magical Express and wondered if our flight was going to make it out. We had been checking the weather back in Chicago and been hearing from friends and family that there was some very snowy and cold weather happening. All we could do was wait and see!
There were many angry people at the airport that morning - a lot of flights from the previous day were cancelled and people were trying to figure out when they would be getting to fly out. We just sat quietly hoping and praying that we would get home. I suppose it's not the worst thing in the world to stay another day or two, but we were exhausted and ready to go home!
Paige had my phone for awhile and took some interesting pictures!
15 minutes before boarding time, we were just getting ready to take the kids to the bathroom when it was announced that there would be an hour delay. We feared this was just the beginning of delay after delay. Somehow, it wasn't though! We were so lucky! Once we boarded and pushed off, there was about a 15 minute delay again waiting to hear more on the weather in Chicago. We were afraid we would be stuck on that plane for hours! Once again, we were very lucky and took off!
This little girl fell asleep before we even took off and didn't wake up until we landed! Disney is exhausting!
Luckily, I couldn't see the runway when we landed, but Wally said he has no idea how the pilot landed the plane. The runway was full of snow! We were so thankful to have made it back to Chicago safely, but we still needed to get home!
We had left our van at a hotel all week. We had no idea how we were going to get our van out of the parking lot. We got to the hotel door to head to the back parking lot and nothing was shoveled. I held Paige and dragged some luggage behind me, Wally had the rest of the luggage, and Luke was wearing his backpack. I told Luke you just have to go for it. Just run as fast as you can through the snow. He was crying because the snow was going up his legs and it was very cold. Obviously coming from Florida, we weren't exactly dressed for the Chicago snow and cold! Once we got to the car, I got the kids in and kicked up the heat and Wally got to shoveling us out using a small scraper - it wasn't a pretty sight. There had to be at least 7 inches of snow on the van not to mention around it! After awhile, we just decided to go for it and try to bust the van out of our spot. It took a few tries, but we made it. The ride home was awful though. I swear we were driving in 3 inches of snow on the interstates. We were very thankful when we pulled up to our home and somehow we made it up our driveway!
What a way to come back from vacation! I had taken the following day off work already, but it ended up being a "cold" day for Wally and Luke so we all got one more day together to recuperate!
We later learned that we were the last flight out of Orlando that day! Wow! We had run into one of Wally's co-workers at Epcot when we were there and when Wally was back at school that week, he learned that this teacher was supposed to fly out late Sunday after us and ended up not getting a flight until Wednesday - that's crazy! I'm so thankful that was not us!
Welcome back to Chicago winter!
