Home in Halifax: Getting There
We’re in Halifax! Based on past history that typically means that posting frequency here drops, sorry.
We flew out of Vancouver last Saturday just before the deep freeze took hold. It was set to be quite the trip: Vancouver to Calgary, Calgary to Toronto, Toronto to Halifax. Some 12 hours plus of travelling with both kids. There was snow forecast for the previous Friday which made us concerned about how we were going to get to the airport, but the amount of snow was negligible and making it to YVR wasn’t an issue.
Despite pushing our bags and both carseats through the airport, checking-in was a pretty smooth experience. Getting through security was a bit trickier — perhaps unsurprisingly to readers of this blog, we travel with a lot of carry-on electronics: 3x MP3 players, camera, video camera, PDA, 2x cell phones, 2x laptops, GPS, plus all the associated wall warts. Plus we had LIQUIDS: boiled water for making formula for Quinlan and we ‘accidentally’ smuggled a juice-box full of OJ for Aidan. A couple of the guards noticed, but each time I noticed them noticing, one would point to Quinlan and that seemed to make it ok. Um hello? A 6 week old drinking OJ from a juice box? Yeah … sure …
The flights were great. Once again, we travelled WestJet. We double-dosed Aidan with Gravol (with our doctor’s permission) which supressed the air sickness that usually affects him but it didn’t knock him out at all. It barely affected his energy level. However, those individual seat-back TV screens were a Godsend once again as he watched TreehouseTV right across the country. He didn’t touch the bag of books and toys that we brought at all. And Quilan made no fuss whatsoever.
The only hiccup was on the tarmac in Calgary. Calgary was a balmy -25C and according to the cabin announcement the fuel trucks were all frozen and we had a delay for a good 45 minutes. And then de-icing. This meant that our tightly-scheduled stopover in Toronto was going to result in a missed flight.  However, it turns out that Halifax was the home-base of the flight crew for the T.O-Halifax leg, and it was the last leg for the plane so they held the flight for the dozen or so of us that were connecting through.
And at the airport, much to our surprise, we were met by my parents and an aunt and uncle of mine (Uncle Roger & Aunt ‘Berta) who had flown in from the frozen depths of Northern Ontario just to see us. Well, maybe not, but it was nice to visit with them for a couple of days too!
Now, we’ve been here for a few days. I’ll post a bit later about all the things going on.
But bajeezus it’s cold!