Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Day 8, Part 1 ~ Departure day
I was up at 3:55am - with coffee.
Looking at our disaster of a room - we did our final packing.
I told V that morning to "fake it till you make it"... With several face masks in hand, we headed out the door of room 208 for the final time, to meet our towncar...
Our car pulled up at 5:25am... Our last view of SoG as we pulled away...
V was doing pretty well this morning...
We made good time to the airport, our car dropped us at 5:55am...
We checked our bags, the heaviest was mine, weighing in at 48#.
We went through security - were I was lucky enough to get my (now standard) pat-down.
Allison went through a different line than V and I did - so she was an additional 10 minutes behind us.
We boarded the correct Fake-O-Rail... and we stopped to purchase waters and snacks for our flight.
We sat near our gate - trying to stay away from other people as much as we could. V is still doing remarkably well - and I was starting to feel crummy.
We boarded our flight at 7:30am, at this point V was wearing a mask. We were pretty far back in the plane, row 22... These seats were very uncomfortable, very hard and VERY close together (Sun Country) - which is NOT how our flight down was.
V had probably the most miserable flight home ever... There was a kid behind us who continued to kick her seat for 3 hours... Because of how she was feeling, her ears never popped (and this is something she is very sensitive to anyways) - so she cried almost the whole flight home... It was awful for her!
Coming in over Minneapolis - we got a bird's eye view of the blizzard from the day before... It sure wasn't the palm trees we left behind.
After landing and heading to our gate, I took a picture of how they clear snow on the runways in MN... As some of our runways were still closed.
We landed at 10:30am, our time... Josh was able to take a half-day off of work to pick us up at 11:30am...
We stopped at Chipotle for lunch on our way home...
It was the "typical" Minnesotan commute - as the roads weren't all the way cleared yet...
And Josh hadn't had time to clear the snow from the day before either... So this is what we arrived home to - a buried yard and cars...
V tucked herself in on the couch...
Meanwhile, Allison and I donned our winter gear and immediately began helping Josh dig out... By the time I was done shoveling - I felt terrible and discovered that I was running a fever.
We were all in bed early this night... We were all just exhausted. Usually we come home from these trips tired and sad to be leaving Disney... However, this time it was just even more sad, as the last few days were not at all what they were supposed to be.
V still has one day left to use on her ticket - which doesn't expire until December 14, 2018... She has not, yet, decided if it will go to waste, or if she will spend the $$ to go down for a day to use it??? It's not really worthwhile, financially, to spend $600+ (between resort and flight) to use $50 worth of a ticket... But we will see, she may find a good deal?
As for me, as you all know, I came down with (what I suspect was) Influenza B... I slept on the couch for 3 nights - in an effort to keep from exposing Josh - until eventually - I just HAD to sleep in my own bed, as I couldn't stand it anymore. As you can see, the dogs took turns cuddling me - they were happy to have their momma home.
In the end, V had symptoms for 10 days... I suspect the Tamiflu wasn't much help to her, as it was started too late. I had symptoms and ran a high fever for 7 full days - I started the Tamiflu 1 full day before I had symptoms.
As of now, there are no plans to have a re-do of this trip.
The girls are both saving $$ for other things, and this just isn't in the budget for any of us. Josh and I leave on our Europe trip very soon - where I will be going to DLP with Myrthe - so I'll get a bit of a Disney fix...
However - it does look like we will be doing a BIG family WDW trip sometime in the Spring of 2020... BMTL just returned from their very first family trip to WDW last week Wednesday - and they are in LOVE!!! They had a blast!!!! So, it looks like we will be going back - Josh included this time.
Stay tuned, as I have a lot of updates to do on my DLP PTR in the coming days - but those updates are much easier to do than these TR updates are.
To everyone who stuck with me, as I had to try and crank out these last days of this trip - to be honest - I hated writing about them... It was so sad to not have V be a part of it with Allison and I... So, thank you.
I have never not finished a TR - and this wasn't going to be my first.
Love to you all!~
D~