Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
Christmas was wonderful. I loved spending time with family and friends, baking for everyone, Christmas breakfast, Christmas dinner, watching movies/TV shows with family, and enjoying time with my grandson. I love singing with him. I introduced him to “Three Little Monkeys”. I used to do it with my kindergarten and grade one music classes. We had so much fun. Like most kids he caught on really quickly and loved when I used a loud, high pitched voice for the monkeys and a soft voice for the crocodile. I first heard it by Sharon, Lois, and Bram. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon,_Lois_%26_Bram.
If you don’t know it, here’s Sharon, Lois, and Bram performing it.
We always decorate the basement family room with numerous multi coloured mini lights. Children are so honest with their emotions. His comment? “The lights make me happy.” How sweet is that. Love it. And him. Even got to babysit him for a few hours. Simply wonderful.
After a fabulous Christmas I headed back to Gulf Shores.
Thankful for wonderful family.
One of my sons drove me to Charlottetown on Monday. I stayed overnight with my brother and sister-in-law. Great visit. The early and I mean EARLY (3:10) Tuesday morning he took me to the airport. I was worried about checking in as I had tried to do online check-in on Monday but it failed. I was instructed to check-in at the airport.
A few hiccups.
Charlottetown Airport
Glad I was early. She had issues with swiping my passport. Just like in Pensacola. Why? Why? Why? After numerous attempts it finally worked and boarding passes received. Whew 😥
30 minutes late leaving but the flight attendant assured me I’d make my connection in Toronto. And I did.
Toronto Pearson Airport
Luckily not many going through security. Not compared to past experiences. Two things that increase your speed and ease when flying to the US are using the mobile app MPC to electronically submit your document info and responses, and having a Nexus card.
My flight to Houston was delayed by about an hour. That didn’t affect me as I would have an 8 hour wait in Houston for my Pensacola flight. But it significantly affected others. A pleasant surprise was meeting up with another retired PEI teacher. So nice to connect and chat. Sadly she and her husband were two of those affected by this delay. They missed their next connection but their flight was rescheduled for today. 🤞🏼
One slightly bothersome aspect of that flight. Not being allowed to use the business class bathroom. Now I do understand. They pay the big bucks for their seats and therefore get their private bathroom. I was three rows back from them. On previous flights I was allowed to use it. But not on this one. The attendant told me to use the one at the back. Ok. I get it. What I don’t get is that I saw at least a half dozen people from the economy seat section go there and they were allowed. Or maybe they watched to see he was gone and snuck in. Ha ha.
Houston Airport
Ok. My plan was to make the best of my long wait. Get in lots of walking. Visit the shops. Have supper. Enjoy a Starbucks latte.
Hmmmm. While checking the board for my gate number I noticed there were two earlier flights to Pensacola. I went to the desk person at the gate (I’m sure there’s a correct title for him but I don’t know it.) and asked if there were any available seats. Nope. Full up. On both flights. Although he wasn’t the most pleasant of people he did suggest I could try flying standby. Never having previously done this I wasn’t sure but I thought why not. Worth a shot. Wasn’t wasting any of my time as my flight wasn’t leaving until 8:22 pm. anyways. He assured me that my original booking would still be valid if I didn’t get on as a standby. Flight was called. I went to the gate. Lovely, pleasant person explained how it worked and she’d let me know if a seat was available. She and another person had some readjusting of luggage done and at the very last minute I was on the flight. Unbelievable. It meant a great deal to me. Instead of landing at 10 pm I landed at 3:15 pm. Yippee. Richard was thrilled. Well about as thrilled as you can be when having to drive an hour and 16 minutes to the airport. But no driving in the dark. That was the thrilling part.
Arrived home to the beach house exhausted but happy.
As tired as I was I decided to start the year on the right foot and do the beach walk with Richard this morning. It was cool but refreshing.
Happy New Year everyone. 🎉 Wishing you all good heath and happiness.
Happiness – Ken Dodd
Take care and stay healthy.
As always, thanks for your interest and thank you for reading.
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Debi's Junket Journal 