I am starting our story about when we first left the states to come here. Our flight in Baltimore didn't leave until 11:50 am so thankfully we didn't need to leave at the buttcrack of dawn. My family and I were able to mosey around, doing last minute things until around 8:15, then it was go time. Bear was all prepped, our 2 giant suitcases and 4 trunks were ready to go, and yet we didn't leave until 8:50. Why? Who knows. We arrived about 2 hours prior to departure though, so it worked out fine.
Once at the airport, that's when things started to get spicy. We knew that during the summer/peak months you were not allowed to bring any "extra" luggage" meaning we could not buy another suitcase to get on, but we had somehow missed to the notice that trunks were not allowed. "Any 6-sided, hard container" would be rejected. I was checking us in with my parents, Tony and the Bear looking totally dejected when they said that we could not take 4 of the 6 luggage things we had planned on. Finally my dad spoke up and asked, "Okay, so what can we do?" The attendant offered either making a Walmart run to buy more suitcases or the airport offers large duffle bags that should fit everything we had in each of the trunks for $30. We decided to purchase the duffles right there on the spot. Had we known that they offered those duffles, we may have just bought those from the beginning. They held everything from each of the trunks and some. Gotta love collapsible storage too. So we get everything through. Our large suitcase were 70 and 71 lbs. and each of the duffles ranged from 53-59 lbs. Once checked in, we said our goodbyes to my parents and went through security. At security they pulled out my backpack and Tony's backpack. Great, we thought. At least it shouldn't be that big of a deal. They pulled Tony over to look at his. He had forgotten to take out both of the laptops from his backpack so they did it for him. After a few minutes we noticed they weren't even touching my backpack but they kept looking and whispering about us. Hmmm... After about 5 minutes two policemen walk in and go over to the backpack. Crap.... what did we forget??? They lifted my empty water bottle and pulled out two pocket knives. Now when you imagine pocket knives, you think of the little red, swiss army pocket knives, right? Well these were the ones were scary looking. One was a 7 inch butterfly knife and the other was a 5 inch pocket knife, both readily available to stab anyone. We had cleaned out Tony's car really quickly when we were trying to sell it. I never looked in those pockets again. Neither of us could do anything but give nervous smiles and laugh. We apologized profusely and the officers said it happened all the time. I'm sure it looked odd to them that a man dressed in a button-up shirt and tie, and his pregnant wife with an ESA dog would be potential terrorists, and yet there we were.
After that debacle we boarded the plane and made it to Miami. Bear had no issues. He stared out of the window for a while and slept the rest of the time. Once in Miami, we got out and began searching for the pet rest area. We had walked all the way down to the luggage claim area when we heard "Will Cherish DeAngelo or Anthony DeAngelo please report back to gate D1?" announced over the intercom. Great... I sat with Bear and the bags as Tony started his trek back to the gate. We figured it was for his sunglasses, but being $10 money savers from Walmart, we didn't really care. It took him about 20 minutes to return. The gate attendant asked him if he had left anything on the plane. Tony replied, yes my sunglasses. The attendant looked at him and said, "okay, how about anything electronic?" Tony thought and thought. What did we even have out that was electronic?? "Was it a Kindle with a black cover?" The attendant pulled out my Kindle and said he'll also go get Tony's sunglasses.
When Tony got back he immediately took Bear outside to go potty before we left again because we had such a short layover. He said it was extremely hot and humid in Miami, he hopes Grenada is not that bad (it shouldn't be though because Miami's temps are higher than Grenadas). By the time Tony got back it was time for us to board the plane. We got in and got comfortable. As people passed us they laughed or talked about Bear and how "you would only see something like that in first class." Little did they know that we could have been seated right by them in coach. After everyone was seated we took off towards our final destination. The flight was short and we got a high class dinner, though I wish we had been given a burger and fries. Bear enjoyed some first class salmon and spread himself out across our laps and the arm rest for the flight. When we arrived in Grenada it was dark already and the weather was nice. We made it through the passport check area quite easily and then went to collect our bags. As you recall from above we had 6 bags each weighting at least 50 lbs. Tony was dying trying to stack them all on our carts to take out, so some large Grenadian men that work at the airport helped us. After collecting all of our bags we went to the customs lines. We waited for over an hour while they rifled through the bags of the woman in front of us. When it was finally our turn we were simply asked what we were bringing with us, and how much it was worth. They took our word on it and we escaped with only having to pay duties on Bear, our computers (which are reimbursed by the school), and $200 of baby stuff. This may sound like a lot, but I promise we got off good on it.
We finally made it outside at 9:30 pm after having arrived at 8. Our ride, Reed and Adam, were there patiently waiting. We apologized that it had taken so long, but they insisted that they had not been there long. We loaded our things into the cars and went home. We rode with Reed who was driving our '91 Corolla that we had bought. He informed us that the window was stuck down and it had a steering issue; Great we thought. It only took about 10 minutes from the airport to our house. Reed and Adam helped us bring our bags in and then left. As they left Adam gave us some dinner his wife had made for us in case we were hungry. It was nice to have someone watching our backs. We spent the rest of the evening unpacking and then we went to bed with the lone fan in our apartment oscillating back and forth over us.
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