Quick Takes - Airplane!! Edition

As always, thank you to Jen for hosting!

--1--

I'm at my in laws' house right now, trying to do this quickly on their computer, so forgive me if quick takes this week are a bit less grammatically correct than normal.   I'm trying not to tie up their computer!

--2--

How did we get here?   By plane, of course!   They live about 2000 miles from our humble abode in AZ, so getting together pretty much means we have to fly.  Every other visit this past year was them coming to us (it was winter, so of course they came to the Valley of the Sun!), but since our house currently resides on the surface of the sun......we decided a week-long escape to the beauty that is Northern Michigan was in order.

--3--

If you saw me IRL this past week, you know.....I was a bit stressed about the plane itself.  I don't like flying.   I just don't.   I stress out, can't relax, and spend pretty much the majority of any flight praying the rosary.   When I'm by myself, that's not a problem - usually the people around me just ignore me (or give me those weird "Crazy Catholic!" looks that I'm already used to).    The idea of getting onto a plane with my entire family - and 3 rascals that needed my help with every.little.thing.for.the.four.hour.flight - was not going to allow me to indulge in my self-soothing continuous rosary practice.   To say I didn't sleep much in advance would have been an understatement.  I was pretty much on edge all this past week.

--4--

I planned ahead - all that stress is good for something, it seems!   I hit up my favourite cheap-toy-and-colouring-book spot (aka the Target $1 spot), and threw together some bags for each of the kids.   Colouring books, crayons, army figures, sticker books (sorry Allegiant Air for the added Cars 2 decorations), extra snacks, you name it, I picked it up.   So the first hour of our flight was pretty successful, and looked like this:

I will admit to being a proud mama for the first hour.  

--5--

But, you see, pride is a sin.  What's that phrase?  "Pride comes before the fall?"

Yep.  They got antsy.   By the second hour of the flight, I gave in.   My boys then looked like:

My self-imposed rule of no more than 1 hour of screen time got thrown right out the window, somewhere over the Rocky Mountains.    They spent the rest of the flight (2.5 hours!) glued to glowing screens.  Sigh.

--6--

And screen time continued....we borrowed my SIL's Suburban to get home from the airport (the joy of visiting Northern Michigan - the airport was a 3 hour drive from my inlaws' house!!).   Her car had a DVD player....which we promptly turned on and watched the whole way home.   The boys started to look like this:

But we made it here safely!   After a good night's sleep, we're back to "normal."  (In quotes because, well, normal isn't a word usually used to describe us....)

--7--

I really should have taken a picture of the bathroom on the plane, but I was worried about getting pegged for a terrorist if I did so.  However, it was obviously the coolest place on the entire plane.  How do I know?

I visited there approximately 392,837,403,834,619,834,650,934,862 times during the 3.5 hour flight.   The bathroom and I were old friends by the time we landed in Michigan.   I know just how cool it is, believe me!

And with that, I'm off to go get my run in.   Be back later!