A Vacation to Remember!

Well after getting off to a rough start and getting to Panama City Beach a day late, we had the most amazing time ever!! I don't remember if I posted before about how we were able to go to PCB, but this is the story...KATIE was doing a giveaway back in November-ish for a little girl who we left behind at Zoya's orphanage. She was giving away a week long stay at their ALMOST-AS-BEAUTIFUL-AS-HEAVEN-MUST-BE condo in PCB, FL. I posted about the giveaway on my blog but had no idea I'd be the lucky winner!! I mean I NEVER win anything!!!! The best part about the whole thing though? Leeza has since found a family who is close to bringing her home!!! You can read about them HERE. You can see they are still in need of funds to bring her home...so please donate if you can!  This family is bringing THREE children home from Zoya's orphanage....my heart is happy!

I am working on getting all 700+ photos together and organized into my favorites and then I will post them! But before I do that I have to tell you just how blessed we are with our sweet Zoya girl (like I haven't said that a million times already haha). So we left the condo yesterday morning at 8:30 for our 11:15 flight. We got there and checked in and realized our flight was an hour delayed...no big deal...we had a 3 hour layover in Atlanta...then it appeared to be two hours delayed, but nobody was at the desk telling us anything...soon after it went back to only an hour delayed. People weren't happy and they had to call the airport police in because people were getting so mean! Zoya miraculously took a 40 minute nap on Shawn during that flight.

We got to Atlanta and this is when the nightmare really started. Had we not already had a cancelled flight on the way down there and an already delayed flight that day I might have had a little more patience. Our flight was to leave at 4:30...around 3:30 they told us our plane was broken and wouldn't be ready until 11PM! You could hear the audible gasps and moans from the waiting crowd. Around 4:30 they told us they got another plane that would be ready to take off at 5:30...great, only an hour late into Buffalo! (Now remember we had to fly into Buffalo even though we left out of Erie since our original flight got cancelled...so car is in Erie, we are returning to Buffalo). We finally started boarding at 5:30 and as soon as we were about to back out a HUGE STORM hit and we were grounded for "20 minutes" (thats what they told us). Although i have to admit I was counting my blessings to be sitting there waiting when the pilot said after an hour and a half "folks I apologize as this has been a terrible day of mishaps beyond our control...we are getting two planes up right now and they're going to report back to us the conditions they encounter".....people started laughing....UMMMMM test planes? Do those passengers know that? LOL!  We ended up sitting in a non moving plane for TWO HOURS total!!! WITH A THREE YEAR OLD CHILD WHO WAS RECOVERING FROM A HIGH FEVER AND VIRUS (more to come on that later haha). Let me just tell you she was beyond fabulously behaved for the entire 4 hours we ended up being on that plane! Shawn and I are now certified as clowns who can entertain certain very tired three year olds for hours on and keep them from freaking out. When we did take off the entire plane started clapping loudly and Zoya just LOVED this part!!! When we finally landed I looked at Zoya and announced "ALL DONE!!!!" She signed "sad" and said "more." SERIOUSLY!?!?!?!?! "Maybe when you are 16 honey" was my reply! I love this girl! She is probably the only person on that entire plan who loved every minute of it and didn't waste one minute of the 4 hours worrying and complaining like the rest of us! Oh how much I learn every day from this child!

We almost could have made it to Ukraine in the time it took us to get home LOL! If there is any blessing in the whole ordeal, Zoya FINALLY sat in her OWN seat for just about the entire 4 hours!! On previous flights she was scared and would only sit on our laps which is not allowed technically but only one flight attendant was not accommodating about it....she quickly changed her mind ;) Once we got into Buffalo we rented a car to drive the hour and a half home....arriving into our driveway at midnight...exhausted....upon taking Zoya out of the car we realized her lips were very swollen and I remembered she had a rash on her legs on the plane...no idea what that was all about.....maybe the lingering weird virus she caught down there.....some benadryl and another sleepless night for us and everyone woke up happy but tired today!

Later I will post the fun stuff....our amazing pictures from this amazing trip!!! (But I'm just sayin' I probably won't fly again for a long time and certainly not again with Delta!)