Corn and Potatoes, plus tornado

After 4 months, I am finally back at work.

But let's rewind to 2 weeks ago when Mark and I traveled to see his family.

The little guy, being in charge

Before going up to Idaho by bus, we saw his brother's family in Utah. Actually, it's sort of a habit now. Oh, we're flying into Salt Lake? Let's visit David and company and then they can pick us up from the airport.

They are long-suffering.

Mark and I get to be "uncle"and "aunt" there, which is always fun, because it means that I am liked just for being related.

Good smiles and fall colors

I listened to the older boys tell me about their dragon game, and stacked blocks and read books with the youngest. We got to go with them to Cornbelly's (a fall family fair) and eat s'mores over a fire, but I think their favorite part was when Uncle Mark played Halo with them.

He loves pumpkins. I love his hat. So we're friends.

My favorite part was the fair. There was a swing zipline, water races with rubber ducks, a corn maze [which Mark and I didn't solve], a pitch-dark hay bale maze [which Jon pointed out was a fire hazard], and a maze of the insides of a blow-up dragon [looked like he had heart failure, btw].

Oh, also a corn play pen.

And an apple cannon.
Mark's favorite part was the apple cannon.

But then it was onward and upward to Idaho.

the best way to travel is to do it unconsciously

I visited my friend Melissa and her baby.

Mark visited his friend Drew.
But mostly we hung out with Mark's family, carving pumpkins and playing games and naming all of the 60s TV shows that I had never heard of.

Because "fall" in Idaho is "winter" in Texas, I brought my winter coat. It's thick enough that it can stand up on its own. Look at it just chillin' on the couch.

We played canasta and scattergories with his sister Laura and his parents, where I managed to play off of the wrong category list...but his dad played off the wrong list AND the wrong letter. So I don't feel as bad.
But in all honesty, the most memorable times were the highly-unlikely-and-not-fun things that happened at the end of the trip.
Like how Mark and I missed a tour of a potato cellar because I wound up having an oral fungal infection that normal people don't get. He really wanted to see that potato cellar.
Or how we spent all of Halloween trying to get back to Houston.
      It went like this: right after waiting in vain for Harry Potter and his pet owl to board the bus (true story. paid ticket and everything), the Salt Lake Express bus driver picked us up and delivered us to the SLC airport. Nothing of interest happened at the airport; I was hoping people would be handing out candy, but nope, no candy.
      Our plane flew from SLC to the airspace above Houston, but couldn't land there because of intense rain and a tornado (?!). Our pilot informed us that he had made a series of right turns waiting for the ground situation to change, but was running low on fuel, so we had to land in Austin. And then the crew timed out, so they couldn't fly us back to Houston. And no other flights were going to Houston out of Austin that day. The airline declined to put us up for the night, as it wasn't their fault that there was a tornado [but might I point out that it wasn't our fault, either?] and handed out several bags of cookies to win us over. I definitely took some cookies; it was the closest I got to trick-or-treating this year.

Southwest Airlines booth in Austin. Unfortunately, that wasn't our airline

     Eventually the airline arranged for a bus to drive us to Houston. This worked out okay for Mark and me, since we live in Houston and I hadn't been confirmed for work the next day, but all of the other people with connecting flights and normal lives were none too happy. Actually, pulling into Houston at 1am (8 hours after we were supposed to arrive) made me none-too-happy either.
      I think I should have taken more cookies.