Flying on a plane across the country with three little ones

It all started with a phone call from one of my best friends, Zack. I remember telling him a couple of years ago that if he ever needed anything I would find a way to be there for him no matter what it took, also I should mention we live in NC and he lives in Washington State. So he calls me up in July or August of 2017 and tells me he's getting married! And he would love to have me at the wedding, but knows that was a stretch for him. This by the way is following a building desire to visit Portland, OR and the rest of the Pacific Northwest which I think started with the Bucket List Family going to Cannon Beach, following Wranglerstar on YouTube (who settled his debt and moved to the PNW to start a homestead), seeing photos of my cousin and his family there...just a culmination of things really. Zack just topped off the tank on us wanting to go, we just didn't know it would be that soon.

So there were two big issues in deciding if we could go to Oregon and Washington, one being money, the second being debt. Those two things were actually pretty tightly intertwined, as it turns out I had some college loan issues which caused me to be delinquent after finishing by undergrad degree some years later after starting (another story altogether) and this in turn bombed out my credit score, meaning no big loans from my credit union. But I worked for a couple of weeks with the loan holders to reverse this decision because I wasn't notified after that I needed to apply for whatever form and request this or that. So, then my credit score went back up! We took this as a confirmation that we should go through with this crazy idea of toting three kids (at the time, 1, 3, and 5 years old) along with a facebook post from an old church friend who tweeted,

"Have you noticed there's a cost to making great memories & finding meaningful experiences? It takes work & money but is worth it in the end." - Joseph Cotten

So with a financial plan in hand, which was to use a portion of the loan to pay off some other credit and consolidate down to make the trip happen, we began reaching out for bucket list ideas. Prior to this, we engaged our Facbook friends and family on financial ideas of how to get to this wedding, now we had the method, we just wanted to make sure we made every memory possible that we could. Along side what we wanted to do, how would we manage to move these kids, our luggage and three car seats across the country? So what was our secret? Well I found this video on How to Wheel 1 or 2 car seats around the airport. We started from there, it took a few times to practice getting the technique down without toppling the rig and I had to reinforce the luggage we borrowed by Laura's dad with some para cord. Also, we didn't check any luggage, not a single thing was paid for. We did the Gate check option on the stroller, two full sized graco car seats and a booster seat which we had to tie together at the air port, undo at security, re-do after security and undo again to go on the plane. Back and forth, back and forth, but it only took us about 3 minutes to do everything up and down. One security attendant said we at least tied for the record time! All those gate checked items went in our red gate checked bags, then everything else was carry-on, including the kids bags which had busy bags and snacks.

We flew Delta and had a great experience overall, minus two small issues. First, our flight was canceled the first day and we had to re-pack everything back up, go home and come back at 5am the next day and start all over again. The second was in most of the air ports, the staff is very courteous and offers to help carry your gate check items with you/for you, offers to help get you around the plane, etc. That was not the case for Atlanta, GA staff, they were basically demanding us move our butts off the plane and up the ramp and reminding us that we needed to have all of our gate check items moved, without offering to help move them. Outside of that, we loved Delta, we chose our own seats ahead of time, got to board early to get the kids settled, and oh did we mention no peanut allergy issues for our son who is severely ANA to peanuts? They only serve almonds on Delta flights now, and the kids loved the Biscoff cookies, peanut safe and all. The busy bags were a must, and the kids really loved peering out the window experiencing their first time flying through the air. Memories I know they will never forget and can't because of the great photos and laughs we shared together.

For more photos from the Oregon trip, please check out our pictures on Instagram along with our other posts: