Space-A Adventures!

For those who are not familiar with Space-A flights, they are free military flights that military members and their dependents can use to travel anywhere in the world if there is space on cargo flights that are traveling to different locations throughout the world. The only catch: you have to be super flexible and have lots of vacation leave ready to burn...and oh did we burn some while trying to make our way to the United States.

Since flights change all the time, it makes it hard to depend on any flight, and even if a flight is actually set to go where they say, if there are not enough seats to accommodate all those who showed up at the terminal that day, you still may never get off the ground.

So after showing up at the airport for nearly 8 days, I was ready to throw in the towel...especially after we pulled the kids out of bed at 1:30 in the morning because there was a flight that was supposed to go to california and we thought for sure no one would be crazy enough to get up at that hour for a flight...but 150 other people had the same idea. We didn't make he flight and I was done.

However, two more flights appeared the next morning for Alaska, and we decided if we could get on the flight, we would take our chances of finding a connection to some where near where we needed to go.

We made the flight luckily, but then got stuck in Alaska for 2 more days while waiting for another flight to get us out of there.

On the morning of a flight set for california, we were at the top of the list, sure to make the flight, but then we were told there were only 4 seats available since they had other people who were already on the flight that had come through with it on it's way to california, and we needed 5. We pleaded with them to open one more seat if they could, as the flight had lots of cargo and seats line the sides and they put seats up and down to make room for cargo. They said no, and we decided it was best that John go ahead with the kids and I would fly commericially and meet them later that day. The kids seemed worried, and while we were waiting for the final head count (as anything can change at any moment when it comes to seats and flights), Bella said a sweet prayer for me that I would make the flight with them. I gave her hug and told her either way, we would be together again that evening.

Unfortuanly, they did a final roll call and did not open a seat, so I said goodbye to my kids and John and they continued through security and onto a bus that was set to take them to the flight-line 15 minutes away (alaska base is huge!)

I waited around for a while and secured flights for myself and wasn't in a hurry to the International airport because the flight wasn't set to leave for another 7 hours. About 15 minutes later, the bus came back and they realized a passenger from the flight that was on it before was not present and they didn't do a roll call for previous passengers. Turns out the guy didn't want to wait for the overnight layover and bought a ticket to get to where ever faster.

My ears perked up as the front desk was taking about being minus one passenger. I made my way over to the counter and was hopeful, when they looked at me, sighed, and then whisked me past security and onto the bus that had come back. I nearly cried as I saw my family, who were equally surprised at my late entry.

I sat next to Bella and told her that Heavenly Father had answered her prayer, and she just grinned from ear to ear.

Anyway, 10 days later, we are safe at John's parents, and have spent nearly a week with them and then will head onto Utah in a few days to spend time with my family before we have to do the whole space-a thing again as we try to make it back to Okinawa.

The thought of that just makes me sick.