First Trip to Minnesota- Day 3

Today we slept in again, after having such a late night last night, Ari and I were exhausted. When we got up we ate breakfast and started packing up. I spent a little time trying to blog before we left the hotel. Jerry had looked up on lds.org where the nearest temple was to Minneapolis. We decided we would drive to the temple and get out and walk around, let Ariauna see the temple here before we headed to the airport. We checked out of the hotel and headed to the temple. Good ole' Garmin took us right there. We couldn't believe it when we got there, the LDS temple we were so looking forward to seeing was a church house with  a sign on the door that said it was a substance abuse rehab.  That's nice.... We should have taken a picture just to give everyone a good laugh, but it was raining again so Ariauna and I sat in the car. (I don't think I mentioned on the blog that it was raining pretty much the whole time we were in Minnesota). We were so sad that we didn't get to see the temple. I guess lds.org needs to update there information online because there was no temple there. We decided we would just head off to the airport and good thing we did. Talk about a nightmare of getting home. We had no issues at all leaving the airport in SLC with her feeding tube, PICC line stuff or her medications. But it was a royal pain in the rear leaving the Minnesota airport. Because we had the feeding tube formula they said they would either have to open every single container or they would have to search me and all of my belongings. Yes, me.... As if I was the one who would be hiding crap. Ugh, I was so mad. Not that I had anything to hide, but because it was ridiculous. By now I was getting very upset. I asked them why the TSA in Salt Lake did not have to do any of that, and all they could say is that SLC was not following protocol. I told her in SLC they were able to scan every carton of formula and she just said they were not allowed to do that here. Oh I was getting madder and madder by the minute. So she proceeds to ask which suitcases had my belongings in it. (Because we were flying Delta and you have to pay to check a bag, we all took the largest carry on we could and our own personal item so we did not have to check any luggage). Bummer for this TSA lady, she had to check every single bag. I told her that I had stuff in every bag and that if she wanted to go through all of our dirty clothes than she could. So the fun began as we sat and watched her search through every single bag we had and swipe our dirty clothes, etc. I was still getting more and more mad. Not because I cared, but because I had made phone calls to the TSA headquarters before traveling to question them about Ariauna and all of her medications and formula for the feeding tube and they promised me it would be easy and there would be no hassle. Well I don't know what part of this at the Minnesota airport was easy. Ugh!  Then came the best part they had to do a full complete pat down on me. I asked them why they were not searching Jerry and they said they only have to do one of us.Oh that is smart, so if we were trying to sneak a gun in, we would just have the opposite one of us sneak it in. Really smart!  I am still mad about it all as I sit here typing this I can feel myself getting heated. I told the lady how mad I was and that I was promised this would be easy on our family. I told her how we had enough crap in our family to deal with right now to have to deal with her giving me a pat down. She started telling me what she would be doing during the pat down and I just kept yelling at her to just do what she needed to do. I think Jerry was afraid we were going to get kicked out of the airport because I kept being a smart a--...... I was so mad, especially that Ariauna had to sit and watch all of that and then to try to explain to her why when she asked what they heck was going on. Ugh!  It was actually kind of funny because I was so mad. Jerry thought about taking a picture of me being patted down but was afraid TSA might throw his butt in jail or something.  Finally after a 30 minute or more search/ pat down we were able to continue our journey. All was well we got some lunch and it was not long after that we boarded our plane.

 This trip home we had a lay over in Detroit, MI.  The flight there was only a couple of hours and then we got off the plane. Basically ran to our next plane and it wasn't long when they had us board it. We all got on and waited and waited and waited. Finally the pilot came on and explained there was some maintenance issues with the plane. We continued to wait and then they came on again and said it was going to take 2 hours to fix so they were searching for another plane to get us home. Luckily we did not have another flight to catch in SLC like several other people who were not going to be making their connecting flights. So they had us all get off the plane. What a nightmare. I should have known there would have been some kink in our trip. We called grandpa at home with the other kids to tell him to put the kids to bed. I knew the kids were going to be mad because I had promised them they would get to stay up and wait for us. Originally we were suppose to be home at 9:15. But now we would not be getting home until about midnight. Sadie was extremely upset. But tomorrow was a school day for them so we needed them to get some sleep. To say the least it was a very long day/ night. We finally got on a new plane and headed home. It was about a four hour flight and we all slept for part of it. When we got home, grandpa headed home and we hit the pillow and was out.