On December 26th Kelly, my parents and I got up at 4:00 AM to head to airport. We left the house about 4:30 and got to the airport about 5:30. The airport was a quite a bit more crowded than I expected. We checked our bags in fairly quickly and got our boarding passes. We beat the biggest rush to the security checkpoint according to reports from my parents. We were on NWA966. It was supposed to leave at 6:41 and did take off at 6:48. It was a very quick flight and actually arrived a bit early. Our first NW issue occurred at this point, they couldn't get anyone to move the jet way for about 20 minutes. We just sat parked at the gate waiting to get off the plane.
Our connecting flight to Seattle was NWA211. The flight was originally supposed to leave at 9:31 AM. While sitting at the gate at about 9:30 an announcement of a delay was made. After much complaining NW said the delay was mechanical due to spoiler. Even after more complaining they indicated the delay would be about an hour. It was at this point I left Kelly at the gate to investigate a later flight, which in reality might be earlier. I had no luck with that flight. When I got back the gate area was empty other than Kelly. She said they moved gates. Apparently the plane was worse and they decided to change planes.
We boarded the new plane a little after 10:30. Then we proceeded to wait close to an hour for NW to get people to move our bags. After finally pulling away from the gate we then waited for a while to get a flight plan from air traffic control. We finally took off at 12:04 PM, only two and a half hours late. As a result we landed late as well.
Kelly's parents met us at baggage claim. We left the airport at got home at close to 3 PM about 3 hours later than planned. When we got home Kelly's parents put the second Christmas turkey in the oven for later.
When we arrived at Kelly's parents her grandmother, her brother and sister-in-law were there or arrived shortly. About 5 PM Kelly's aunt, cousin and her cousin's 2 year old daughter arrived. After everyone got settled we exchanged and opened presents. A little after 6 PM we finished with presents. At that point Kelly's brother and his wife packed up to leave since they had to work the next day.
At about 8 PM the remaining people sat down to eat dinner. Kelly and I were a little tired but enjoyed dinner. We both finally got to bed about 9 PM, which for us was like midnight after getting up at 4 AM.
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