Flight Plight

We made it safely to Utah, but not without incident. We got to the airport Saturday afternoon with time to spare before our first flight. But, our first flight was an hour delayed, and since our layover was only 40 minutes to begin with, we were pretty sure we would miss our connecting flight to Salt Lake. The attendant at the counter insisted our flight would land only 7 minutes later due to this and that, but no, we landed an hour later. (We didn't have a lot of luck with northwest airline employees being actually helpful.) Fortunately, the airlines put us up in a very nice hotel with two flat screen TVs. They gave us a crib for Naomi, and they had a very nice pool, which taunted us. Um, next time we will be packing swimsuits in our carry-on, just in case. And a change of clothes.
This was a water feature in the hotel's lobby. Naomi loved climbing up on the ledge to touch the water, but since we only had one pair of pants for her, we tried to discourage her. All things considered, that first day wasn't so bad. I was just sad we missed church.
On day two of our airport fiasco, we were booked to fly through St. Louis to Salt Lake. Well, as luck would have it, our first flight was delayed an hour and a half. We didn't even try to fly to St. Louis this time. The soonest we could re-book a flight was on Monday night. We weren't too happy about staying in Detroit another night, and this time the airlines said they would not put us up in a hotel.
In the middle of all this, Kurt noticed there would be a direct flight to Salt Lake leaving at 4:35 pm, which was not too long after our St. Louis flight had originally been scheduled, so we decided to try to get on stand-by. Kurt stood in line for a while and tried to talk to the employee about getting us on the flight, but it wasn't until I showed up with Naomi, who was being especially cute, that the employee pulled a few strings and got us on stand-by. We were pretty certain we would make it on the flight.
And then... The plane pulled up to the gate with a very special announcement. The plane blew a tire in landing, so mechanics were working on the plane to see if it was just the tire or if there was more damage that needed to be repaired. The flight would be delayed an hour. And then... the tire had damaged a bit of the plane. The flight would be delayed an additional hour... This went on for a while.
In the end, they flew in another plane from Atlanta to come get us (thank goodness the flight wasn't cancelled), and since other passengers had to re-schedule, there was room for Kurt and I on the plane. We finally left at 1:30 am (or was it 2:30?) and flew into the Salt Lake airport at 4:30 am (6:30 eastern time). Kurt's mom and sister picked us up. I felt bad that we made them lose sleep, but we were so glad to finally be at our destination.