A Great Flight...

The flight over was fabulous.....long, but quiet and smooth.  So quiet in fact, that once darkness came, Colton was sure the plane was no longer moving.  "Why did we stop?  Did we land?  When are we going to start flying again?"  This went on from dark until we actually landed.  Colton was quite a seatmate.  Audra had the window, Colton was in the middle and I sat on the isle. Audra did her Honors English summer homework the whole way, which made me the logical choice to answer Colton's five million questions.  About every 20 minutes he would ask where we were?  "Are we over Colorado? Is that Texas down there?" It was non-stop. Toting my Bible onto the plane, I did attempt to get some reading in despite the barrage of endless questions from the little man. I decided to read the book of James - a great how-to on living the Christian life. Meanwhile, Colton visited both the front restroom and the rear restroom at least six times a piece, each time mashing the tops of my feet as he passed in front of me to get to the isle. He became quite friendly with one of the stewardesses, who eventually told him where he could go to get his own snacks. He was very hungry and she was very nice. 

Much of our in-flight discussion was about what Colton wanted to be when he grows up. Colton has always wanted to be a doctor.  He even wrote it on a paper he brought home from school last year, Dr. Colton Pettit. As we were flying, he discussed two more possible careers. The flight tower controller and/or a pilot. He decided about an hour into our flight that if he were to be a pilot, he could also be a doctor. Then, about halfway into our flight, he yelled, "I want to be one of those instead," pointing to the stewardesses passing by.

"You want to be an airline steward?" I asked.

"Yes, because they get to pass out snacks and travel all over," he said, as if it were the obvious career choice all of a sudden.

I shrugged my shoulders and turned back to my Bible reading. About two minutes later, as the stewardess passed our row, she looked at Colton and asked if he needed any more snacks. He told her no, but ordered a coffee. Her eyes grew large and she looked right at me. I quickly told her no and she handed him an ice water as I enjoyed a cup of coffee. It was a great flight.

Arriving, we got our luggage and proceeded to the rental car shuttle bus. As we looked at a man waiting to pick up his luggage, all dressed in black, I recognized him to be a Hasidic Jew. While we were noticing how different he looked, I noticed people looking at us much the same way. Apparently, there are not a lot of cowboys in Baltimore either.

All of the rental car stuff took much longer that anticipated and the drive to the hotel was very exciting, given that Wade turned down the GPS offer. Without a map and with him refusing to ask directions, our 3 mile drive from the airport to the hotel ended up taking about an hour and a half. But, we made it and everyone managed patience in the process. Here are the kids at check-in.....which was about 2:00 AM...