Oh wow, oh wow. What an adventure this trip was! We started planning our mid-winter trip to somewhere warm and sunny early in the fall, and decided that rather than trying to recreate the trip to Puerto Rico that Jason and I took years go, we opted to go somewhere new for all of us. None of us knew much about Playa Del Carmen, which is just south of Cancun, but it seems that everyone who is anyone has been there, so we decided to check it out. I'm still looking for the perfect balance between hyper-planning and actually relaxing on vacation, so we utilized the help of a good friend and travel agent with booking the hotel and the plane tickets for this trip. We knew we wanted to take a trip, we just didn't have super strong feelings about the hotel and location. She took care of some of the details we didn't really care about, saved me the agony of researching, and ended up being a great help when our plans had to be changed last minute.
After months of a wildly mild winter, including the warmest December on record in Iowa in over 130 years, we were hit full force with all the snow, ice, subzero temps, and blizzard conditions at once. And all of the cancelled flights to go with it.
With no school on Friday or Monday, we were set up for an excellent long weekend getaway. Except a huge storm and arctic freeze was heading straight toward us and threatening to cancel our perfect 6 AM Friday morning flight out of DSM. Which it did around 10:45 on Thursday night. We quickly rebooked a flight for noon and went to sleep for a few hours, only to wake up to the news that our noon flight was also cancelled (I get it, not sure we really wanted to fly out with 40 mph gusts of winds) so we rebooked out of Kansas City up to Minneapolis then Cancun, then promptly realized that we weren't going to make it south in time.
So! In what could have been either the best or absolute stupidest decision of our trip and possibly our adult lives, we packed everyone and everything up in the truck and headed north, straight into the path of the blizzard. We were watching the roads closely and it appeared that once we got through the metro area we would be met with clearer roads, and while the snow was blowing it was definitely not the worst we've ever driven through. The following day the storm and the roads were an absolute nightmare, and it seems that we were just enough ahead of it that we were able to make the four hour drive safely. We even tacked on an extra half hour when Daddy realized 15 minutes in that he had left his phone at home and we went back to get it. I'm so grateful that we didn't have to make a decision about driving on the roads any later than we did because they only got worse as we were traveled farther from home.
I didn't take many pictures through the blizzard because it was just ugly and scary, and I was on the phone for nearly three hours with the airline trying to confirm our seats on the flight from Minneapolis to Cancun even though we intentionally missed our first flight. These little monkeys were more than happy to pile into the car and get going, especially once they realized they could do four-player games on the Switch.
Thank goodness for happy babies because Daddy and I were in a world of stress at this point.
Ultimately we learned that somewhere in all of the cancelling and rebooking options that Delta offered us over the last 12 hours, we lost our seats on our Friday flight to Cancun. We were just starting to consider the reality of rebooking the entire trip in March when an acceptable alternative was presented to us- take a direct flight from Minneapolis to Cancun on Saturday, stay until Wednesday and fly back to Minneapolis on Wednesday night. We had to bump our hotel stay up a day (thanks to our travel agent for taking care of that!), were able to shift our excursions to accommodate our new dates, and the kids still only ended up missing one day of school even though we were gone for an extra day because the weather cancelled school on Tuesday.
AND! We were able to take care of all of this without ever setting foot in an airport. What a nightmare that would have been.
AND! We got to spend all of Friday at the Mall of America! The kids are always asking when our next visit there will be, so what a bonus that we got to spend a unplanned day there! It was the perfect way to unwind from the stress of getting to Mexico, which we still hadn't accomplished, but it definitely took our minds off of it for a few hours!
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