Always listen to your gutt

Checking in early usually means avoiding long line ups, it means printing off boarding passes, it means removing hastles of airport check ins right???  Wrong... when you have an infant in lap or are flying with Air Canada it simply means having the illusion that you won't be standing arond for 1.5 hours in a cue with really grouchy people.

We follow all the steps to check in and even call the airline to verify we have done everything correctly, and yet our family has to endure a hellish 1.5 hour checkin.  Not only do we have to wait in line as Air Canada doesn't seem to feel that families with children deserve any breaks   They inform us not to come in until 1:45 as our flight departs at 3:45 and we've already been checked in....

So despite our better judgment we believe said horrible misinformed person and we show up as they suggested.  We are told we have to wait in this line from hell with our almost 4 year old who hasn't had lunch and is running on cereal and a few organic cereal bars.  We look around at all the other pissed off parents and older people who haven't joined the ranks of the technologically savvy people and wonder WTF are they thinking?  Who does this to families.  First off we as a family of four pay more for a flight then the single person who smiles at us as they zip by our line in the already checked in so avoiding all the hastle line.  You can see the families with small kids wanting to throttle those passengers.  The other single older folks look at your off their head toddler and think why can't you control that horrible beast.  Meanwhle you want to sick them on everyone there so as to show the morons who felt families don't deserve any special treatment they should really consider a F'ing famly curotosy lineup.  

All the families towing car seats, strollers luggage for 4 waiting for over an hour, each of us looking longilgy at the line up thinking please just let us go...   When we finally do get to the front the woman takes our information yet fails to print off a boadinng pass for our youngest.  We have no clue we are missing anything so we lug our luggage to customs go through the painful process of having to scan our passports maunally ourselves, take photos of each of us and then continue with the luggage to they US customs offiical only to find out we can't get through without this boarding pass.

Lucky for us they did think of placing an Air Canada ticket adgent at the security gate and they give us a pass for our daughter avoiding us having to lug everything back around the corner down the hall to the previous line up.  Good thing cause our flight at this point is boarding.

So we rush through the security check point I won't even mention the water my partner fails to throw away and thus is found in the xray scan  We arrive at our gate late and my partner goes up to the woman tells her we were held up hoping she'd allow us to board the plane and instead are told to wait in line because we've missed the point where they fianlly cut the familes a break and allow us to board the plane early.

I swear if we ever fly AC again I am going to make sure I unleash my toddler on them so they can get some first hand understanding of why you just don't do that to families.  So if your travelling with kids and are told to just show up 2 hours before laugh at them and show up 3 hours early so you can actually sit and enjoy a coffee or at least try to instead of rushing throught he aiport yelling hurry up were gonna miss our flight.

Don't forget the passports

Travelling with 2 kids in tow may seem to some like a lot of work but it's really about prep time. Prepping for a trip with kids goes like this.  You write a list and then re-write it a million times.  You pack and un-pack about 10x in hopes to get the stuff you need to fit into the allowed baggage with no additional cost to you. You get the shoes your going to have them wear and realize the day before the trip the kids feet have grown and now don't fit into those perfect shoes you picked out for them.  Thus forcing you last minute to have to dig into the treasure chest of shoes you have stored, if your so lucky,  to find a pair that will work.  In the end though as long as you have your essentials, diapers, natural pain and cold meds, toys, entertainment, snacks and in my opinion a good stroller and carrier your all set.  The other stuff can be picked up when you land if you really need to and forget something your kids can't live without.  Lucky for me my partner is completely organized and writes list upon list so the likely hood we forgot anything is pretty slim but for some reason I am worried my bathing suit didn't make the cut.... Oh well we shall see when we land :)

We are heading to Hawaii for a 5 week vacation.  We have the house/cat sitter in place, and have been packed for about a week.  The kids are so easy that they really don't care about what is going on or they simply don't realize for the next 5 weeks they won't be home surrounded by the toys and familiar items that make most of us feel safe.  My youngest biggest concern is that her pack-pack (harness back-pack) comes along.  At a ripe old age of 21 months she really doesn't demand a lot other then boob and snacks :).  My son well he's almost 4 and let's say he's in between the OMG why are threes so bad and all grown up supposed to be Fantastic 4 stage.  We've packed an IPAD for him though we never allow him to play on one we've learned Air Canada has opted for IPAD's as the choice of entertainment source on their flights.  What is that about????? Who does that to people on a 10 hour flight.  I did call them and ensure there is a plug cause let's just say if we can't zone the kid out on movies about 5 hours into the flight the kids going to turn into Godzilla.  God help us all.

The flight is about 10 hours and with the added time before for check in and then baggage claim we should be travelling for a total of about 14 hours.  Arriving in Hawaii at about midnight our local time I imagine the kids will be a bit of a wreck.  It's expected with a time change and all.

So for today we have packed the car, are about to load up on food for the trip cause did I mention Air Canada also DOESN'T PROVIDE FOOD????? You don't want to know how much we paid for these tickets!!!! Ok I degress...so as I pick up the last minute food for our dinner on flight cause we refuse to pay for crapy airline food and finish the final touches of cat proofing the house we are fully prepared and ready to go.

If I forgot anything well it's too late now we are off.