Schedules

I am trying to book airline tickets for a flight I don't want to take. For a flight my husband doesn't want to take. Why do I need to purchase said airline tickets? Because the holidays are coming and we know that we need to see our families, and we do want to spend time with them, but the hassle of the holidays, and running from one house to another, with two kids, I could keep going. I'd love to just stay home and cook for my family, but I'm 95% sure that's not going to happen. Add to that, David is with us for Thanksgiving this year (the whole one year here, one year there thing) and I'd really just like to stay home. I'd rather spend ten hours cooking, so it can be eaten in fifteen minutes at home than travel this holiday. We're trying to do the right thing.

But these airline schedules! David won't get out of school until noon on the 24th, so the earliest we could leave comfortably would be 1:30 p.m. (I won't pull David out of school for vacation travel, it sets up a bad precedent for his dad, and I'd hate to have that thrown back at me.) The schedules are for before 1:00 p.m. and then nothing really until 4:00 p.m. which gets us in late to our destination. The return flights aren't that much better, apparently the airlines feel that unless you catch a flight before 7:00 a.m., they're going to have to stick it to you in the pocketbook. So it looks like we'll have to pay top dollar, and travel either really early or arrive really late (the kids'll love it!, the parents will be frazzled!) for a trip we don't want to make.

Don't get me wrong. When I was single, I loved flying early, no one at the airport to get in my way. And I loved coming home late, squeezed in every last ounce of my getaway I did. But with kids there is decidely a much different take on things, it definitely is more along the lines of how-quickly-can-I-there-no-change-of-planes-please-can-I-bring-along-food-and-snacks-for-my-kids? I love our portable DVD player, the flights are much more quiet, for ourselves and our fellow passengers. But we still have to push them through to the gate and through baggage claim.

And the airlines are running only 80% on-time! What is the point of that? If they're going to be twenty minutes late more often than not, then let the flight leave at 1:30 and let me get to the airport without runnng a marathon.