I love the tattooed neck man.

Today is an oh so glorious day. Something happened that makes me want to post again! We received our flight information a little over a week ago for our trip to Amsterdam/Paris (which we leave a week from Monday). And we found that our flight lands in Chicago at 5:19, and our Amsterdam flight leaves at 6:04. That leaves us 45 minutes to taxi, deboard, run through O'Hare, and pray that the gates aren't closed for an international flight which usually close 30 minutes before takeoff. AND that is saying that there is no weather delays. Over a foot of snow last night alone. High of -2 tomorrow. Cedar Rapids to O'Hare on United, riiiggghhhttt no possibility of delays at all. Our tour company said 45 minutes is the least amount of time legal for a layover. Thanks guys, give us the least amount of time possible. The company said that there was nothing they could do to help us and that that was plenty of time. UNLESS we want to pay $350 a ticket and then they can change our flight. So we tried our next option, calling United, who at first said no, then said yes, then said no again. So that was out. (All of this so far took about a week and no less than 20 phone calls). We looked up all the flights that day, and the only one with seats left out of Cedar Rapids was the 6am. So we planned on waking up at the crack of dawn (or earlier) to try and go stand by from 6am and hope that we got on a flight before our proposed 4pm one.

And then! Another Christmas Miracle! (see my dentist post for CM#1) My mom decides that since she was snowed out of Chicago this weekend, they were going to go shopping down in Cedar Rapids today, invited us to go along. Tim had the brilliant idea of trying to go to the airport and talk to United in person. Alas, WE CAME OUT VICTORIOUS! He stood in line for some bitchy mean lady who rudely (but thankfully) directed him in the direction of a guy our age, with a tattoo on his neck. After he explained our plight, the guy basically said that it was ridiculous that we had that short of a layover, and without any fee, any questions, any doubt, he changed us to the 1:30pm flight. AMAZING. I am beyond thrilled. We will arrive at 2:40 leaving us a little over three hours to relax at O'Hare before boarding a plane for nine hours.

WOOOOOHOOO!!!!!