Family Fun Night

Last night, the boys and I had to pick up my mother-in-law, The Smurf, at the airport. I hate the airport.

We got there at the precise moment her plane was to land. We waited. And waited. We drove around. And waited some more. I decided I needed to park and check the flight schedule inside.

I tried to park. I was chastised by a lady who told me I couldn't "abandon" my car in the valet lane. I explained that I just wanted to find the Smurf and get home .... by now it was getting late. She told me she didn't really care .... I'd have to go park in the "No Parking" zone (no kidding) - but I couldn't leave my car! - which I couldn't figure out how to do.

I drove around again. Back to "No Parking." Left the boys in the car with an order: "Don't touch your brother!!!" I ran inside and discoverd, lo and behold, that her flight was on time ... and had, allegedly, arrived a good 40 minutes earlier. I know she's short, but I think I would've seen her come out.

Now it was time for drastic measures. I had to park my car. In the parking lot. This took some manuevering, as apparently there was a mild explosion in the parking lot recently (they call it "construction"). We parked in lot M, which stood for "Miles Away" - and began the trek to the terminal. Spanky had managed to injure his ankle at school, so we sang a little song as we went.
"OW OW OW, OW OW OW" Ah, that never grows old.

I hit the info center and have the Smurf paged. She's not there. Her flight is no longer listed on the little TV, because it arrived an hour ago. Right. Suddenly, my cell phone rings, and it's the Smurf, a little too chipper, frankly, saying "I'm here!" My answer? "Yeah, me too."

We collected her things and managed to get home by 8:00. Not bad, since we were picking her up at 5:30. I learned several things at the airport though:

• My children can be easily entertained. They were thrilled to ride the airport shuttle to the car. Spanky was particularly excited because there were no seatbelts.
• My children have pretty short attention spans. FrogBoy kept commenting "Look, an airplane!" As we were at the airport, this was a rather frequent outburst. And he was genuinely excited each and every time he said it.
• It doesn't take a lot of money to do something fun with your kids. We had 3 hours and all this fun, and it only cost 75 cents for parking. Forget the fair - we're going to the airport!