A "Polar Vortex" impacted the better part of the US, and we can say we experienced it. On Friday, we watched the Facebook posts of all our friends leaving the US to head back to Belgium. We knew snow and freezing temperatures were coming, and hoped we would be okay to leave the following day. Chris just kept saying we should have been on the Friday flight. By 6am Saturday morning, our 6pm flight had been cancelled. After 3.5 hours on the phone with a terrific United employee in Salt Lake City, we had a plan. We would catch a flight from Moline to Chicago on Sunday evening, spend the night near the airport, and leave on a 2:00pm flight to Frankfurt, Germany with a 8:30am flight to Brussels on Tuesday morning. It wasn't ideal, but it was a flight home.
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Saying our goodbyes to Sophie and Sawyer on Friday night.
Shortly after this, Sawyer got sick again. And, it turns out our flight delay was a blessing. Allison had the same puking on Saturday. Being in an airport and on an overnight flight would have been a disaster. She woke up feeling much better the next morning. Everything happens for a reason…..
Plans changed again….our flight to Chicago was cancelled…so we decided to drive to Chicago on Sunday. The weather got progressively worse the closer we got to Chicago, but thankfully we made it safely. |
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| Rainbow looming all the way! |
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| And, the best part about this delay was the Giordano's Pizza. It was AMAZING!!! |
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| Giant icicles! |
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| The hotel had a pool, so the kids were thrilled about swimming. |
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| On Monday morning in Chicago, the temperature was -45 degrees with windchill. It actually hurt to be outside. Luckily, we didn't have to be outside for very long. |
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| O'Hare was dead because…. |
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| Everything was cancelled! Thankfully, the Frankfurt flight was still on time. What a miracle! |
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| One of the few planes actually moving. |
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| Once on the plane, these were just some of the sights out the window. I was a little stressed. That is a fleet of snow plows. |
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| And, they had to de-ice the plane. |
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| After an hour of sitting on the plane (not complaining…could be worse), we were on our way. |
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| I felt like we were flying out of Antarctica. Oh wait, it was actually warmer in Antarctica that day! |
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So long Chi-beria!
And, that concludes our Christmas trip to the US with a very memorable ending. Thank you so much to our friends and family for making it such a terrific holiday!
Until next time,
Wendy |
