Our first day: the early start, our arrival and the first of many surprises.

We left out of the Richmond International Airport at o-dark thirty in the morning and arrived with a lot of time to spare. The first surprise (after our arrival) was the fact that you had to pay for your luggage. This was a big surpruse to me since I hadn't flown in such a long time. It seemed like such a waste of money and yet another way for the airlines to take money from their consumers. I'm not sure how long this practice has been going on but I would think that they make enough money off airline fares that they don't need to charge for luggage, but I guess that I am wrong.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, our early arrival and the rather uneventful airport wait.

We grabbed a quick breakfast from the Starbucks counter. Mommy had her daily first caffeine fix of the day and the kids got some yummy sweet treats. We dutifully waited in the "pre-security" area  before going through the sexurity check line.

Now let's step aside for a second and talk about airport security. My husband has never flown and I haven't flown in quite a while (pre- 9/11) so we had no idea what was involved with airport security. We approached the security gates with my daughter still in her stroller. My husband went through first and after taking every piece of metal that he had on his body off of himself and our son and they walked through the security gates with relative ease. Then it was my turn and the first thing the TSA lady said was "she needs to come out of that stroller," so I take my daughter out of the stroller, fold it up and put it on the scanner. I think took my little ones shoes off and let her run through the metal detector. I got held up because in my ernest to pack everything as compactly as possible, I had to unpack everything from my bag: the digital camera, the video camera, my laptop, all of my son's medications and our carry on bag. Urgh! How annoying. My husband, not realizing that I wasn't through security yet, let my daughter run back to me. But instead of running to me, she ran out of security and the security guards just watched her go. Now, I realize that it is not there job to chase children around the airport, but they could've at least stopped her from exiting the security area. So my husband had to run and get her, thus starting the whole process of security all over again for both of them. What a pain! The best part about the entire flight was that both our kids slept the entire way to Orlando! The entire time and it was great!

When we arrived in Orlando, we met a nice little man that was there to greet us. I wasn't able to get a picture of him but he had a nice little cart with a sign that had Joseph's name on it.