Rose is home once more

But it wasn't an uneventful trip home. She was supposed to fly home Friday. However, I had it in my head that she was flying home Saturday - so she also had it in her head that she was flying home Saturday. She didn't check until it was too late on Friday to catch her flight. So... her flight was rescheduled for early Saturday morning.

Bright and early Saturday morning (think, before 6 am), Rose was at the airport to catch her flight. She boarded on time, and says, "I must have fallen asleep because an elderly lady woke me up as she was getting off the plane." However, they weren't getting off the plane in Edmonton, they were still in Regina. The plane had computer problems. Then fog rolled into Regina, and they had trouble getting a replacement plane so it was actually 2:15 before she flew on to Edmonton. They made several postponements... "the flight will leave at 10; the flight will leave at 12," etc. She says that the new plane was a prop plane and she was sitting right beside the props; it was noisy and it made the plane shake.

Anyway, she arrived in Edmonton at about the same time she left, thanks to the time change. However, the flight to Yellowknife didn't leave until after 8 pm. So, she has lots of time to kill in the Edmonton airport now. Finally, at five minutes before the flight was due to leave, they announced that the flight was cancelled. Rose phoned collect, in tears. "I have no money, I'm hungry, they've cancelled the flight until tomorrow morning, what do I do?" I told her not to wipe her tears, to go to the ticket agent looking as forlorn as she sounded on the phone and to ask for a meal voucher, a hotel room voucher and a breakfast voucher for the morning. Air Canada came through with all of those things, and she did catch the flight Sunday morning at 6 am. She was home by 8:30. It was really good to see her, and we put her right back to bed for another four hours. Somehow she felt like she had been shorted on her sleep the night before. (When she set her alarm Sunday morning in order not to miss her flight, she had forgotten to reset her clock to mountain time, and so was up an hour early).

It was the Christmas concert at church yesterday. Bram had a small part; it was of course, the little kids who stole the show. There were a few angels (one with a soother), that were really cute. Jenna was also an angel, but she's so tall for her age that she didn't look quite as adorable. Bram read part of the scripture from Luke, and organized props for the little kids, hanging them up at the right time.

This is Lloyd and my last week of work before Xmas break. All government employees have an unpaid break between Xmas and New Years. I'm really looking forward to the break.

The clock is still ticking down in preparation to Arctic Winter Games. We've got about half of the volunteers we're needing (1200 or so), which is doing fairly well; but we've only got 83 more days until the games. The deadline to register as a volunteer is Feb 1, so the time is really going quickly. We still don't have anyone planning to come see us during the games - would love to have you visit. March 9-15.