The Best Trip Ever.....almost

It has been a week since Dave and I got back from Cleveland. We have needed almost the entire week to recover from the trip. We had a great time, however, let's just say we had a few bumps along the way.

First off, let me establish the purpose of this trip. This trip was designed to be purely a VACATION. No work, no football, no Ogden, no stress...just fun, family and food. It was going to be a great opportunity for Dave and I to take up some time before the draft and to see Ben, Tara and their boys. With that said, I will now list key events and occurrences of the weekend, and you can decide for yourself if we met our goals for the trip.

1) Our original flight with American Airlines is CANCELLED. Wait...no problem, Dave calls the night before and reschedules our flights with Northwest and United. He is told to check in at Northwest the next morning.

2) We arrive to the airport and are so excited to see NO ONE in line for Northwest. Proceed to check in, and the lady tells us that we must first check in w/ AA. The AA line is about 3 miles long.

3) An AA worker decides to let me "cut" in front of everyone in the AA line and checks Dave and I in so we can make our 8:20 Northwest flight.

4) We run back over to check in, yet there is another problem. The girl can't check us in. She gets on the phone and remains on the phone "trying" to figure out the problem for well over 45mins. 8:20 rolls around and our plane is now in the air and we are still trying to check-in. Eventually the worker realizes that AA made a mistake and registered Dave and I as the same person.

5) The AA lady feels bad, and tells us she can get us out on a flight that would leave at 3pm. For those of you not good at math that means 7 1/2 hrs in the SLC airport.

6) We accept the flight and occupy our time in the airport by staring, eating and sleeping.

7) We make it to Cleveland at midnight. We then watch as everyone picks up their luggage except for us. Yes..that is right, they lost our luggage.

8) With the clothes on our back we then made our way to Ben's house. (We did see Bruce Jenner at the airport though which was pretty cool...even though he was smoking)

9) The next day it is too rainy for Dave and Ben to fish, but they do manage to get in a muddy round of golf. Thanks to Ben, Tara and I are able to spend a glorious afternoon getting massages and pedicures. We also get some shopping in.

10) That night (still in our travelling clothes) we went to the Indians baseball game. We had AMAZING seats! The Indians fall really behind, then in the 8th inning start to make a killer comeback...but it was all in vain as it started to rain and the game was cancelled.

11) Finally at midnight on Friday our luggage arrives at Ben's house!!! Woo hoo. The guy delivering says to Dave: "Wow, this one is heavy, you must have something important in here."

12) Saturday Dave and Ben are able to get in another round of golf while Tara and I take the boys to eat at Applebees.

13) Later, we decide to go to the nation's largest indoor waterpark. We originally going to do this on Thursday but couldn't due to missing out flight. We drive 30 minutes there, and find out that they were too busy and didn't let us in. We buy carmel apples instead and decide to go eat at Outback. Ben's mushrooms were gross and his steak was still mooing...yuck.

14) Saturday night, my stomach starts to hurt. Eventually the pain snowballs into full fledged stomach flu. I was up all night as was Dave trying to comfort me. Dave and I stay in bed while Ben, Tara and the boys go to church. (Later....Ben gets the stomach flu after we leave)

15) I eventually feel well enough to pack things up and head to the airport. As we get to the airport we see that our plane going to Chicago is delayed an hour. When we finally make it to Chicago Dave and I SPRINT through the airport trying to make it to our connecting flight. We finally make it there and the plane is still on the ground, but they won't let us on.

16) We end up having to stay the night in Chicago (luckily AA paid for the room) and eventually make it back to SLC late Monday afternoon.

17) Much to our surprise our luggage was waiting for us when we arrived in SLC.

So, in a nutshell, that was our trip. We had a lot of stressful and aggravating times where I thought Dave was going to kill someone, but we also had a lot of great times. It was so fun to see how much our nephews Maxton and Seth have grown. Maxton has such a wonderful personality and Seth is getting so big! I also really enjoyed hanging out and talking with my sister-in-law Tara. She is such a sweet person and a great mother. I really relate to her type-A personality. ;-)

It was also fun to see the great duo of Ben and Dave. They really are the best of friends and always know how to have fun.

So...to the Ben Hale Family...thank you SO much for inviting us into your home! We had a wonderful time despite some of the circumstances. We hope to see you again very soon!