We said good bye to Chanda and her critters this morning. It was hard. But they'll be up to see us in a month :) We are going to have SO MUCH FUN at the High Sierra music festival! :) :)
The kids behaved beautifully at the airport. Our flight was delayed by about 40 minutes, but since we were going to be waiting for 3 hours for our connection in Dallas, the delay didn't worry me. And the kids watched planes take off and land and taxi by the windows and had fun counting them. We got on the plane and Sayer found our seats and then watched out the window for a good while. Duncan fell asleep about 10 minutes before the plane landed. Which made things a bit difficult, as I had 2 kids, 2 kid backpacks, a laptop bag, and two rolling suitcases to deal with - and now one of the kids was asleep! Luckily I knew where the sling was and it was easily retrieved. So I got one suitcase down and put Duncan's backpack and the laptop bag on it's telescoping handle, got Sayer into her backpack, got Duncan into the sling, and got the other suitcase down. Then Sayer preceded me while I carried one suitcase in front of me while pulling the other with the backpack and laptop bag. We made it! Whew! Then we got to hike over to the skylink train to get to another terminal where we stopped and had lunch. Duncan woke up then and had a bit to eat with us. Then we got back on the train (because it was an adventure and we had time to kill) and went around the terminals again. When we found our gate we sat down and played the Peanut Butter and Jelly game. Then the Ladybug Game. We started Animal Yahtzee, but then we had to make a potty run and when we came back we played tic tac toe instead of resuming. When we got on the next plane Sayer wanted to read, so I dug out two books for her, thinking that by the time she finished them we'd be airborne and I'd be allowed to get her bag back out from under the seat to get more. Nope. Delay on the plane because something was leaking water. So she finished those books and two more before we got going. In the end our second flight was also delayed about 40 minutes. Call it conservation of delay.
On the second flight I pulled out the computer for the kids to play games or watch a movie. They played I Spy Mystery for a bit, then wanted to watch something. The battery gave up about 10 minutes into the show. I'm not terribly happy about that. A fully charged battery should last for longer than an hour and a half on power save mode. Hmmm. But after that Duncan played with clay and Sayer took a nap. When we were disembarking the ladies behind us told the kids that they were the best behaved children they'd ever seen on an airplane - they hardly knew there were kids seated nearby. :)
We got off the plane and got to baggage claim and called Mark. He was still about 15 minutes away. Our car seats still had not come up so we waited and waited and waited ... I think our bags were in the last ten or so to come out. Ugh! And Mark had not yet arrived. So now I got to juggle 2 kids with their backpacks, 2 wheeled suitcases, the laptop bag, and two car seats. One of the car seat bags had wheels, so I stacked one on top of the other, then I found a strap that I could use to attach the telescoping handles of the wheeled bags and the laptop bag. Viola! So we inched our way along to the elevator, which is when my phone rang. Mark was in the parking garage! Yay! So I told him to meet us at the elevator and we went down one floor, across the slide walks (that have barriers that make it IMpossible for someone with two bags to enter, though once past the barriers the bags fit nicely), and up 5 floors. Then there were hugs for the kids and helping hands for me :)
On the way home we stopped at Trader Joe's, then to pick up our CSA veggies, then to get gas for the car. Then we were home. Whew. Unpacked. Started laundry. Ate dinner. Got the kids into bed. And collapsed.
Oh, and in addition to the reading, which was our home schooling for the day, we also had an interesting discussion about seeing the heat waves coming from the airplane exhaust. Sayer wanted to know why the air was shimmery. We talked about how the molecules in the exhaust were very hot from being inside the plane's engines. And hot things move more quickly than cooler things. And the hot exhaust molecules were coming out of the engines and banging into the cooler air molecules. And how we could see the air because of that movement and the collisions. I'm not actually sure that that is entirely correct, but it's something we can build on. :)
The Sounds of Senna covesii
2 weeks ago
So glad to hear you all made it back safely! And I'm not at all surprised to hear they were well-behaved on the plane - I happen to know they're incredible kids, in just about every way (...they take after their mama!)
ReplyDeleteAs for the hot air explanation - it made sense to me, and it's a whole lot better than I would've done spur-of-the-moment. I seem to hem and haw a lot when Nyah asks scientific questions (which is just about thrice daily lately.) Hey, we can't all be Chanda ;)
I'm not sure what Sayer means by shimmery BUT the hot air has a different index of refraction than the cold air and thus the light which normally would travel straight through it is bent by the index of refraction change of the two "areas" of air. When the areas are themselves moving, it can make the things on the other side look like they are being distorted.
ReplyDeleteYou get the same effect from "mirages" when the hot air masses causes a reflection. In this case though you have reflection instead of "moving" refraction.