Scott and Whitney: Dallas

About a month ago we were able to go to Dallas to visit my brother and his wife for a weekend. They both work for Southwest so they got us some "buddy passes" to come visit them. It's so nice to fly for free but it definitely has it's downsides, like getting stuck in an airport for 8+ hours with a 13 month old. (more on that later)...We had a great trip while we were there though and are grateful that they sent us out there! We loved Texas. Scotty especially loved all the great BBQ! We loved seeing Danny & Brin and miss living close to them. We were also able to meet up with our good friends Sara & Dillon Christensen for lunch! It was so good to see them!! Brooklyn did pretty good on the flights going over and we were able to take the car seat on for part of the flights which was so nice b/c she was able to sleep. Coming home is a completely different story. The night before and morning of our flight home my brother went onto his nifty SW website where he can look at how full the flights are. We picked a little longer route b/c it was "wide open" so that we could have a better chance of taking the

carseat on b/c Brooklyn will NOT sleep in my arms anymore. We got to the airport in Dallas and the SW attendants at the desk even said that our flights looked good the whole way home. We had a short flight to Houston first and that leg was wide open. Once we got to Houston we hurried and went to our next gate and were shocked when we found TONS of people surrounding our gate. Well, it turns out that it was Spring Break in Texas (which my brother didn't know) and I guess within that 50 min flight we were on, over a 100 people signed up to fly standby and were trying to get on that flight to Vegas. NIGHTMARE!!! Since we are buddy pass flyers we were bottom of the priority list and kept getting bumped and bumped and bumped. We thought about just turning around and going back to Dallas but we didn't know if this would happen again the next day anyways and all of our luggage was already on its way to Sacramento. There was a flight at 8pm that night to Vegas that we were barely able to get on. That was one of the worst 3 hours of my life. Brooklyn did pretty good considering the circumstances but would not fall asleep to save her life! Her eyes were seriously so red and she could hardly keep them open but she fought it so bad. We had the RUDEST lady behind us ever who kept making the nastiest comments to us whenever Brooklyn cried a little bit. Once we got to Vegas, we literally had to RUN to get on the next flight. Brooklyn had a total meltdown on this flight b/c she was so tired and had had the longest day. I also had a little meltdown myself and just cried most of that flight. She finally fell asleep for about 30-45 min and luckily that flight isn't very long and we had the nicest people around us this time. We finally got home around 12:30 am (we left for the airport around 9:30 am our time). Lets just say that lots of tears were shed that day and we will never be flying standby with a baby for that long of a flight, no matter how open the flights look, again. We seriously LOVED going and seeing our family and friends though!!

On our way to Texas, exploring the Vegas airport...