the wiener mom and her wonderful wieners take flight

I have just recently arrived home from my first three wiener trip-just recently as in two days ago, but it kind of takes that much time to recover. My wieners and I visited the fair city of Fargo, ND to see Daddy wiener's 98 year old grandpa. Also on the trip were Daddy wiener's sister, husband and three kids and Daddy wiener's parents. Given the price of gas and also the even higher price of my sanity we didn't drive the 9 hours, but flew with frequent flier miles (good thing all that charging finally paid off). The wieners are not a car-loving people. Big wiener is from the classic "are we there yet"camp. Middle wiener is from the less common, but equally annoying "drop everything you give me on the floor and scream" and little wiener likes to keep it simple. He just cries until he passes out from fatigue. So, 9 hours in a car wasn't going to cut it for us. We flew.

The flying itself went very well. All wieners were well-behaved, save Middle wiener's desire to unbuckle his seat belt constantly. Side note: it's hard to believe that in a huge, terrifying, possible death inducing airplane crash, that piece of nylon is going to save anyone. Lucky for us the two flights were both under an hour, so short that there wasn't even beverage service, but small bowls with lids of orange juice and water. I couldn't do it, water isn't supposed to come pre-packaged in a bowl with a foil top. I strongly suspected it would taste like plastic. I have a strong aversion to airplane food anyway, good thing no one serves it anymore. Big and Middle wiener, sitting with daddy, were thrilled with their bowls of water and Middle wiener proceeded to spill only half of it on himself and his seat. I was sitting across the aisle with Little wiener, who was busy charming anyone in viewing distance with his smile and mohawky hair do.

So the flying itself was fine, the Minneapolis airport was lovely. They have a play land type area that was very popular with the wieners, not however more popular than the 75 cent rides on the vehicles that go up and down and make noise (outside the FREE play area). Daddy wiener got suckered into a couple dollars worth of up and down.

We arrived in Fargo on Friday night, in time to swim in the Pirate themed indoor pool. Hugely popular with wieners young and old. Me, I'm not that into swimming, you can theme it up as much as you want, but I'm still not going for it, unless I absolutely must. We did swimming, eating, visiting, more swimming.

Great Grandpa wiener was thrilled to have us visit him. He freely handed out the key to his Rally scooter thing that gets him around the old folks' home. Not sure if children under the age of 8 should be driving, even 2 miles per hour in the hall, but of course the kids were incredible pleased with themselves. By the time we finished with it, they had only crashed into the wall a few times, dislodged the cargo basket, pinched one finger (Middle wiener, of course), and had successfully avoided injuring any residents. Great Grandpa wiener commented, over the screaming, how well behaved the children were. Yes, he's hard of hearing.

Monday it was time to head home to Madison. Our first flight was on a small plane from Fargo to Minneapolis and hit a little turbulence, nothing that bothered the wieners, or me. Until, a crazy flight attendant came over the little P.A system and told us she wasn't going to collect trash from the little bowls of water because IT WAS TOO DANGEROUS!.Are they ever supposed to say things like that? Aren't they supposed to tell you everything is going to be okay as you plummet from the sky? Then, to make matters worse, upon our arrival to Minneapolis and our taxi into a gate, she came back on the P.A. and said, "Well we made it." I think she needs her P.A privileges revoked.
Of course we couldn't get home without a delay. A two hour delay in Minneapolis and then another hour on the runway because a light was burnt out, got us home by midnight. I sat with Big wiener and Middle wiener on the last flight and happily let them fall asleep with their heads in my lap. Well, Big wiener did that on his own. Middle wiener, in his own style, refused to lay down and was asleep sitting up with his little head bobbing all around until I finally fought him into a laying down position and all was peaceful. Until we got off the plane and Middle wiener cried all the way down the tunnel thingy, through the gate to the baggage claim, through the parking garage, and most of the drive home from the airport. Oh well, it can't be peaceful all the time, or even 10% of the time really.