Stuck in a Furrow

I'm so glad that I took today off of work to "recover" from my trip to Phoenix. It was such a jam-packed trip to begin with but when you thrown in a few delays and 50 people, then you get quite the experience.

I'll start at the beginning. I spent the night at Bre's house so that her mom would drive Bre, Monica and Rachel as well as myself and Bre's boyfriend Jeremy to the airport at the ungodly hour of 4:30am. That is, we were leaving at 4:30 am. We went to bed at midnight after some good girl times (no pillow fights in our panties but there was wine involved, Laguna Beach and some internet stalking. Ah...Jason). This is what the rest of the day looked like!

4:30am - Rachel and I are RUDELY awoken by Monica. We may have overslept the alarm. We have about 2.3 minutes to get dressed and in the van for the trip to the airport. I must admit that Rachel and I look pretty darn good in the morning without much effort!
5:00am - Arrive at airport. We are pretty much at the back of the pack of our team checking in. The line up in hugely long and we inch slowly, oh so slowly, towards customs and then on towards the security line.
6:30 - We are at the front of the security line! Woot Woot! We take our shoes off, pull our Ziplocks of gels and creams out of our bags, dump our camera and MP3 players in the bin and wait for our turn to go through the beeping thingy. NO SUCH LUCK! There was a security breach! We all had to leave our stuff and walk back around the corner (where we were about 20 minutes prior) and wait. We had no idea what was going on and they wouldn't say anything other than it was a "security breach". Later, we discovered that another passenger had an electronic neck massage pillow and one of the wires was exposed. We were let back though and we all rushed to board the plane as most everyone else was on the plane already. Starbucks will have to wait!
7:05 - departure time
7:30 - still on tarmac. Then the pilot comes on and say there is a problem with one of the altitude panels and they are getting it checked out.
7:45 - still on tarmac
8:00 - still on tarmac.
8:30 - testing failed and the flight is CANCELLED!
9:00 - we are heading back through Canadian customs because since we went through US customs, we now have to go through Canadian customs.
10:00am - we are rebooked on a 3:15 flight to Phoenix...which was no easy matter, I'm sure, as rebooking 50 people in 1 group was probably a bit challenging. We headed to Montana's with our airport vouchers and took over the restaurant.
12:00pm - we meet as a group in the airport chapel (I didn't even know there was an airport chapel)
1:00pm - here we go again! Back through check in, customs, security and finally on the plane!
3:05pm - Arizona bound. I'm sure the other passengers thought we were crazy as there was quite a bit of cheering as we took off.

We landed in Phoenix at 6ish. Met Damon and the bus and headed to the church for supper and a full evening of speakers and note taking. After we found out that the flight was delayed in Calgary, we called Damon and he reworked all the speakers that were supposed to meet us that afternoon, for that evening and Sunday morning. That meant a late night as the last speaker started at 12:30am. Most of us were fighting to keep our eyes open as we were running on 4 hours sleep!The speakers were good for the most part and we were grateful to finally head to the hotel room! I think I was asleep before I even hit the pillow...

We had to be up at 6 to get ready for church and be on the bus at 7:15am so we could hear the rest of the speakers at 8am before heading to the Pilgrim's Rest Baptist Church. This was a definite highight and another post to itself!