Airplane Ride to Utah

We are finally ready!!!  After an extremely long night for both Clay and Laura (Clay got in around 2:30am; Laura got to bed after midnight)...the car is gased up,  the bags are packed, the van is loaded, the kids are anxious, and 2 tired parents are ready to head out!!  Laura had carefully planned food, snacks, coats, etc.  that everyone would need for the drive and then the 5 hour plane ride.  Since we weren't switching planes at our layover, we wouldn't have the opportunity to get food .... so Laura and the kids had made pepperoni rolls for the second leg of the flight, when the kids (and the parents) would inevitably get hungry.  Well, during the drive to the airport, Laura didn't see the snack bag for a while and upon questioning....it was found in the back seat where 2 boys were sitting, and there laid an empty bag where the pepperoni rolls USED to be.  The boys took it upon themselves to eat the whole bag of goodies!!! They were full and happy...the rest of the car wasn't very pleased!  There went the food plan!  They shouldn't be as hungry now, right?  Right...  At the airport we unloaded 8 bags, 2 carseats, 4 kids, 2 parents, and a partridge in a pear tree.  We were quite the load!  The kids were sooo excited to fly on an airplane.  None of them could remember their last airline flight...I guess they were too little!  Both Clay and Laura were so pleased with how good they all did on the plane.  They were soooo well behaved!  Usually if you take our kids, any kids...and strap them in a confined space for 8+ hours...it can get VERY miserable...but it wasn't, it was very fun for all of us.  We had a great time flying together!  It was amazing...can we go on an airplane everyday?  Well, we had yet another surprise waiting for us at the SLC airport...lost luggage.  Does that still happen?  YEP...apparently it does...and it happened to us.  We thought we would be sooo smart and put all our winter gear - hats, gloves, hats, coats, snowpants, etc.  all in one bag.  (we were planning on heading to temple square straight from the airport, and we didn't want to deal with them all on the plane, but we also didn't want to have to rummage through everyone's bag to get a coat either.)  Well, when we landed in SLC it was about 6 degrees outside, with snow, wind, ice, etc. and....we were in t-shirts,a few of us had long sleeves...but not dressed for the cold weather and we were anxious to put on our warm winter jackets...can you guess which bag got lost?  Yep...all our coats!  It accidently got unloaded in Portland and was still there until the next day.  So....needless to say. We weren't happy campers!!  Next stop...car rental place, where YET another adventure awaited us!  The rental car company tried HARD to sell us on a more expensive rental.  Now, Clay is a sucker for large MANLY vehicles, but when they denied our coupon for a free upgrade (can't use in "ski" season apparently...didn't say that anywhere on the coupon.... )  and the suburban they were trying to sell us on was going to be ...$100 more a day we said no, we will take our original large SUV.  They tried again....this time they went down to $50+ more a day, and when we said no again, they went down to even $30 more a day, when we finally denied ALL their offers and we wanted to original vehicle at the original price... they said we would have to wait an additional 30 minutes for that car.  At this point, we had already been waiting 30+ minutes.  Clay had been working with the car rental company, while  Laura was at the terminal with all the kids and the luggage, waiting for Clay and the car to pick them up.  An additional 30 minutes was NOT good news...So, we decided that maybe 4 freezing kids without coats, that have been cooped up a plane or car for 9 hours, standing in the car rental lobby would help speed things up!  Yep, it sure did...We all came tromping through the doors with all our loot and waalaa within minutes we had a vehicle.  They never actually brought the originally reserved vehicle.  They finally ended up giving us the suburban at the same rate as a large SUV.  We were happy campers!   We are pretty sure they didn't have the car that we originally wanted and that is why they were trying soooo hard to sell the larger vehicle to us...but when we said no...they didn't know what to do and finally just gave us the more expensive car to cover their mistake!  In the end,  Clay was in heaven...a big beefy suburban.  He couldn't stop talking about the thing... He was always anxious to volunteer when any errand needed to be run that included driving somewhere!  So, in the end, it all worked out - but what a pain in the middle.  Whew....