..the trip from hell..

last weekend our little family went to san francisco for tiffany's (lance's sister) wedding. we, well i, had been looking forward to this trip for a while. first off, i love san fran. it is chalk full of culture and character...i love the food, the sights, the shopping...everything about it! second, i was excited for lance's niece, sisters and their husbands to meet finn! tiffany and kevin missed meeting him the day he was born by about 8 hours and wendy, dave and shaya live back east and weren't able to make it out this way until now. third, i was so excited for tiff to tie the knot and to be in the temple with lance's siblings and sibling's in law. :-)

well, things don't always go according to plan in life...case in point was this little vaycay. i think it was probably the worst weekend of my life, and it was definitely the worst trip of my life!

lance has been wanting to ride the train to california since, well probably since before he was born. so we booked our train tickets about a month ago and at the time it sounded kinda fun but as the date to leave got closer and closer i started to dread it. does 17 hours on a train with a two and a half month old baby sound fun to you? exactly. i begged lance to change his mind, but he is stubborn and wouldn't budge. and that's how our trip from hell began.

to start off, the train was three hours delayed coming into utah, so when we got to the train station at 10:45 p.m. we just had turn right around and go home for three hours. everything was okay while on the train for the 8 hours we were on it. i still don't understand why the train has to go so dang slow...i mean seriously, pick it up a notch or two so the ride isn't 3/4 of a day long! we ended up making more stops than they usually make for whatever reason, so if we had made it into california we would have arrived four hours later than scheduled. but of course we didn't make it all the way to california (on the train anyway) because a semi-truck hit our train. yes, you read that right. a semi tractor-trailer just rammed right into us like it was no big deal. who knows what he was thinking? we'll never know because he is dead. so that put a little hiccup in our day. to read my full account of the train accident, click here.

the train accident happend 30 minutes out of fallon, nevada, which is about 70 miles out of reno. we finally made it to reno at about 7:00 p.m. thanks to an extremely nice couple who offered to drive us there. i will always be grateful to the hunsinger's for their generosity. when we got to reno we needed to rent a car...one way (to oakland, ca) which is incredibly expensive. i mean seriously, why is it so much more to drive it one way?! i went to the bathroom and to get a drink while lance worked everything out with enterprise. when i got back i was expecting for us to be ready to go, but nope. lance forgot his driver's licence in the console of his truck, so he was unable to rent a car in his name. great! they wouldn't let me rent it in my name because i don't have a credit card. long story short, we had to call american express (thank goodness they have 24 hour customer service), and add me as an authorized user on lance's account. well, it takes 24 hours after you request to add someone before it is official, so we were still in a little pickle. basically lance and i both yelled at the enterprise man and finally he bent some rules and allowed us to rent a car using lance's credit card in my name. seriously, what a j.o.k.e.

we got a hotel room in a little town 30 minutes east of sacramento because we were too tired to drive. we woke up bright and early the next day and made it safe and sound to oakland by 10:30...we had two hours to spare before we had to be at the temple for the wedding. sadly, i didn't have any clean underwear because we didn't have time to make it to a distribution center before the ceremony. i got a spray tan the day we left on the train. i started my period on the train. so i was feeling just a little disgusting, if you can imagine. ;)

the temple was good but i was still in a horribly bad and shaken up mood. i mean seriously, we could have died in that dumb train accident. i didn't have time to pump before we went into the temple, so i had to nurse finn right when we got out so i missed all the pictures. :( the sacrifices us mom's make for our kids, eh? ;) jk. after pictures i was s.t.a.r.v.i.n.g. so we went and got some food...greasy chicken since we couldn't find anything else. they also only served coke products and for the life of us we couldn't find a gas station with a soda fountain so i hadn't had a pepsi and let me tell you, that's enough to make me grouchy for the whole day. by the time we got to tiff and kevin's house the ring ceremony was just starting. for one reason or another my angel baby decided that would be a great time to have a screaming fit unlike any i have ever heard. so i missed the entire ring ceremony! lovely.

in between the ring ceremony and reception we had to return our one-way rental car and get another rental car for us to use the rest of the time we were there. the enterprise in reno totally screwed up and we had to pay more than they originally told us. perfect. and the only two cars left on the lot at the enterprise in oakland for us to rent were a jeep and a ford f150...the two most expensive cars to rent (lance decided to go with the truck. he said it was the cheaper of the two but i am not sure i believe him! ;) ).

when we got back from the rental car place i was exhausted, mad, depressed, angry, and p.o.'d (pissed off!). i was not in a partying mood at all so finn and i just took a nap together and i missed the whole reception.

the next day was much better. we went sightseeing in san fran and nothing seemed to go wrong that day, thank goodness. :)

before we came home on monday i called amtrak to see if they knew anything about the luggage that was left on the train. turns out it had just arrived at the oakland amtrak station that morning! thank goodness...i felt like a little kid on christmas morning when i went to get my suitcase! after picking that up we went back to kevin's house (where we were staying) and packed. lance got a phone call from a news reporter who wanted to do an interview so lance ended up talking to him a little bit longer than he was planning and we nearly missed our flight. our plane was scheduled to leave at 1:05 p.m....we got to the ticket counter at 12:34...the guy checking us in was brand new and had no idea what he was doing so someone else came to help him and it just took forever ("press here, no no not there. go back. let's just start over"). i was so ticked at this point. then when we got to security we didn't have a ticket for finn so lance had to go back to the delta counter to get that. we made it onto the plane with a few minutes to spare. the plane ride home was good and finn did a great job! when we landed in utah we realized we left lance's dad's gps he had lent us somewhere at the airport in oakland...so there is another $150 out the window.

it was the longest, most expensive, most horrible 3-day weekend of.my.life. i don't think i will be going on any vacations anytime soon. being at home, in the comfort of my own things is much more a vacation than our lovely trip to the bay area was. ahhhh the term home, sweet home has taken on a completely new meaning. :)