Sunday, March 9, 2014

Delays and Birthdays

We flew home (or tried to) on Jan. 5, which is Dave's birthday. We knew the weather was getting bad in Indy, but our flights had not yet gotten delayed or cancelled. We took off in SLC and everything was still on time. As soon as we landed in Denver, we found out that our flight to Indy was cancelled. After frantically booking a hotel and waiting in line to reroute our tickets at the frontier counter, we went out to On The Border to celebrate Dave's B-day! It was a welcome hot meal :)

We were delayed in Denver for two days. I'm not sure if Levi like his temporary crib or not...

 We made the most of our delay and got out to see Denver. We were able to go to Mile High Stadium (just outside). It's pretty incredible to see in person!

 We also went to Red Rock Park. They have some pretty spectacular formations. Even though there was snow on the ground and most of the trails were closed, we had fun taking in the warmth of the sun and the beauty of the scenery. 

We actually enjoyed our delay in Denver! It was surprising that it turned out so nice because we have heard horror stories of getting stuck in Denver. But we went through quite the ordeal getting home the rest of the way. Our original flight was on Sunday, so we ended up flying out on Tuesday night. But we couldn't get a flight directly into Indy (the whole city was STILL shut down from the "polar vortex"), so we flew into Cincinnati. We got a rental car and started to drive up to Indy, which is normally a 2ish hour drive. After a white-knuckle 3.5 hour drive, we finally made it to the hotel where we had parked our car. We decided to call it a night and drive the rest of the way to West Lafayette in the morning. We were about 10 miles from our exit the next day when traffic came to a standstill. We were SO tired of travelling at this point, I almost cried. We turned around in the median, and went back to the last exit to take the back roads. It was a huge relief to get home that day. What an adventure!!

Before we left for Christmas break, I had set Dave's birthday presents out on the bed so that he would get them when we got home (remember how we were supposed to get home on his b-day?). He got them 3 days late, but he got them!! He got a white shirt, OSU slippers, and a grilling set :)
Oh, the next week, I also had a birthday! We didn't take any pictures of my birthday, but we went to the store and I got to pick out some new under armor yoga pants (Yay!!) and Dave made me a special dinner of Penne Rosa (my fave from Noodles & Co) and Fried Chicken.
(I found a pic!)

My awesome friend Melissa made me a Quarter Cake for being a quarter of a century old! She also threw me my very first surprise party! It was so fun, and the cake was DEEEE-Licious!

3 comments:

Michelle said...

Just reading about your crazy trip home made it even worse, I can only imagine how frustrating it was by the end. Glad you guys were safe though and that you got to celebrate birthdays soon after.

The Gillen's said...

That is a crazy trip home! At least you got some fun out of it.

The Gillen's said...

PS Dave-I like the beard!