What a couple of Weeks!

WARNING THIS IS A REALLY LONG POST!!

Wow, I don't even know where to begin. It's been a fun, tiring and overwhelming couple of weeks. The Thursday before we left for Mexico I ran a few errands (I had returns at 5 stores plus going to the bank) at my last stop I ran into another car in the parking lot. AAAHHH! Our van got more damage than the other car and there was no one in the parking lot that witnessed my actions, so it was very tempting to just drive off, but my conscience got the better of me and as I was writing a note of apology, the owner came out of the store. She didn't speak much English, but took my name and number and said her husband would contact us. We still haven't received a call, but it is good to know I did the right thing.

Saturday we left for Mexico. We had an early flight 8:30 am which means we had to be at the airport at 6:30 am. Rebekah had a paper ticket because she was a lap baby and Joel had a paper ticket due to a last minute change in his itinerary and the line for United was LONG. We got to the counter to find out we were in the wrong line and when we finally got to the right person it took forever, we didn't have assigned seats and couldn't get them assigned until we were at the gate. We had about 45 minutes until departure and then proceeded to security. The line was the longest we have ever encountered at DIA in our lives. You would have thought it was Thanksgiving or Christmas. The line was outside of the roped off portion. At least 1 1/2 to 2 hours! AAAHHH! We were told the security over the bridge at Terminal A wasn't bad, so we literally ran (all 10 of us) to the terminal A security check point. It only took 10 minutes to get through. Yeah! Then we ran to the train, then ran to the plane. They were holding the plane at the gate for us with our seats which were all over the plane. With 5 kids under 5 years old that was not going to work. We were trying to get rearranged with flight attendants yelling at us over the loud speaker to please sit down. All of us finally seated and on our way to San Diego (we actually still pulled back a few minutes early). Whew!

San Diego . . . a 1 1/2 hour lay over and then off to Cabo San Lucas! Or so we thought. We made it through security and to our gate and were just about to get food (the first we would have eaten all day) and the entire airport was on lock down. No one was allowed in and no on was allowed out and there was no food to be had. After about 30 minutes we were told there had been a breach in security and the entire airport (employees and all) had to be evacuated. We were less than 10 minutes from our plane starting to board when they emptied the airport and we began a 3 hour wait (actually just Joel and Jess waited outside in the hot sun while the rest of us sat at McDonalds) for them to reopen the security lines. AAAHHH! After our extended layover we finally made it to Mexico! YEAH!Sunday (Josiah's 6th birthday), we were in Mexico and had a full kitchen and the ability to save quite a bit of money by making our own meals so we were off to Wal-Mart to buy groceries for our stay. Joel went to the beach with the kids while I took Rebekah shopping with Joel's sister, uncle and grandma. We were in a familiar feeling location so, forgetting that I was in Mexico, just tossed my wallet in the cart like I would at home and went about my shopping. I occasionally left my cart to grab something off the shelf and all was going well until we got to the check out and I realized my wallet was no longer in my cart! AAAHHH! You have got to be kidding me. It was really stolen! I went to customer service to check if it was turned in and they said "Why would any one turn in a wallet?" Silly American! I retraced my 1 1/2 hour journey through the store to make sure that it hadn't fallen out of the cart while shopping, no such luck. I finally admitted that it had been taken and we went back to the hotel. I immediately called my credit card company and they had already blocked the account because of several large suspicious purchases that were being made on my account. I then tried calling my debit card company which only has a 1-800 number and found out you can't call those from Mexico. We had to relay call through Joel's dad in Colorado to get information sent to my bank. There was nothing they could do to stop the charges on my account until Monday since the bank was closed on Sunday. I then tried to put it behind me for the evening and enjoy the rest of Josiah's birthday with the family.

Monday, call to the bank. There has been almost $1,000 dollars in unauthorized charges posted to my account, but my debit card is now closed, but the only way to get my money restored to me is to make a police report (with the Mexican police). Called the hotel front desk--they said I had to go into town, they couldn't help me out. That afternoon, tried going into town to find the police and found a small sub-station, they couldn't help me, we had to go to the main police station out of town about 15 minutes away. So up the hill we went to the police station/jail that looked like it also served as the town dump (trash everywhere). We arrived and Joel in his best Spanish tried to relay the situation. After several mis communications we finally figured out that the only one who could help us was not at work at the moment and we had to come back on Tuesday.

Tuesday, back up the hill to the police station. After a 20 minute wait we were seen by Deena who took a police report and though our very jumbled Spanish and here limited English we got a report that said (all in Spanish) that my wallet was stolen in Walt-Mark, my middle name was mis-spelled and I lived in California, Colorado, USA. But what can you do??

The rest of the trip was actually very fun and relaxing. We had a hot tub on our deck that overlooked the Sea of Cortez. We took a glass bottom boat ride out to Los Arcos, the southern Tip of the Ba ha Peninsula, Joel went Para sailing and we spent several hours at the various pools on the property. All in all looking back the week was good and we had a good time with family.

Saturday, time to return home. First flight went smoothly and we had no problems. We knew we had a 4 hour layover and were planning on taking the kids to a outdoor mall to break up the afternoon. We got through customs very quickly and went to the United check in counter. The flight on our itinerary did not exist. There had been a schedule change and no one had updated our tickets. AAAHHH! We had booked our tickets with US Air, so there was nothing United could do but call US Air who booked us on a Frontier flight that actually left 30 minutes earlier, sounded good, so off to Frontier to check in. Frontier says, yes you are on the flight, but there are no seats available on the plane, there is nothing else we can do. Off to US Air, their first response is "We don't fly to Denver, we can get you to Phoenix or Las Vegas, but not to Denver." By this point we had been in line for 1 1/2 hours at 3 different airline ticket counters and no one had eaten for a while. We didn't care how they did it, they were getting us home! Frontier had a 8 pm flight (4 extra hours in the airport) and they had seats. We were booked. So we spent an extra 4 hours in San Diego for a total of 8 hours on a layover. We finally made it in to Denver after 11 PM and were home and in bed by 12:30 AM.

I told you it's been a crazy couple of weeks. I spent most of yesterday trying to restore everything that was stolen in my wallet. I went to get a new Drivers liscense, took the police report to my bank trying to get the $1,000 dollars restored, put a stop payment on any checks they might try to write and called to report our social security cards (mine and all 5 kids) as stolen.

Back to normal life??? Not entirely, Joel drove all weekend to Virgina to begin his month of training for his new job. We are between health insurance, jobs, paychecks and trying to keep our spirits up. God is bigger than all of this, right?? He cares for us in spite of the crummy circumstances that sometimes come up, right?? We are learning to trust that He is always in control and has our best in mind, right??? I know it in my head, but my heart sometimes has a hard time following. I know in 6 months this will all be a distant memory and life will be good, but it's hard to feel that way right now.