Waiting for Daddy

Michael usually has a car come pick him up from the airport.  When he flew back from Abu Dhabi for Christmas, the girls and I had nothing better to do and were so excited to see him, we decided to make the trek out to the airport.  We checked his flight status before leaving, saw it was on time and hit the road.  As we were pulling into the airport, I get a call from Mike.  I answer, "Did you just land?".  His response, "Yes, in Dallas".  Ugh!  It was not raining at the time, but there was rain in the area and they didn't feel it was safe to land in Houston with the limited amount of fuel on board, just in case they needed to circle.  Both of the girls had fallen asleep on the 40 minute drive to the airport and it wasn't worth going back home at that point.  He was only an hour flight away, it couldn't take that long, right?  Uh, we were very wrong.

After driving and driving to let them sleep a little longer and stopping at Subway to get the girls something to eat, I decided to just go back to the airport and wait for him there.  Oh, did we wait.  It took about 3 more hours until we saw him.  In retrospect, I should have just gone home and let him get a car, but we had no way of knowing it would have taken so long.  Of course, the one time we go get him, he is several hours delayed!  The girls were amazing and so well behaved.  They actually had a BLAST while waiting for him (until the last 20 minutes anyway).  Here is a little of what we did while we waited.  :)

 We talked on EVERY pay phone we came to

 

Rode the inter-terminal train the entire full circle, visiting  every terminal at IAH

 Got exercise in the underground train track area by RUNNING full speed away from Mama and making Big Sister quite nervous with how far away you are

 Running some more

 Calling the information line

Getting fed up with waiting and laying down 

Climbing on top of each other, just because

As if the above pictured activities are not enough to make you itchy and trigger some major OCD concerning the cleanliness of the airport phones, train, and floor, a list of the not pictured activities: drinking out of every water fountain and visiting every bathroom we came across regardless of thirst or a need to go!  The girls also got a snack out the vending machine, something they thought was way cool.