This Is The Day That Never Ends...

I think that I can honestly say that July 6, 2010 has been the longest day in my life! We had to leave for the Silay/Bacolod airport by 7am to make it in time for our 8:50am flight to Cebu city. We were all ready to go, packed, house cleaned and out the door with minutes to spare. We arrive at the airport all ready to go and excited to start the trip home to Canada only to find out that the flight we were booked on is 'no longer' operating. WHAT!? Can they do that? Just decide to stop having an 8:50am flight and not inform anyone about that? ANYWAY, I was not so much the happy camper I was and I was getting a little nervous. In the Philippines they do everything as slowly as possible and as by the book as it can be. They were trying to tell me that for us to transfer our tickets to the next departing airplane on the same airline at 10:50am (putting us in Cebu with just under an hour for our international connection in a different building and with a different airline) we would have to apply for a refund on the credit card used to purchase the tickets and buy all new tickets. This normally wouldn't be such a huge problem but they only take cash at the airport and 5 tickets add up pretty quick and since we are leaving the country we had NO peso's on us. I was finally able to get in contact with the manager face to face and explain calmly (yes, very calmly) our situation. After pointing out that I thought it was ridiculous we were not contacted about the flight cancellation and reading the terms and conditions with him he got us on the next flight without having to worry about rebooking, contacted our connecting airline to tell them we would be a late check in and provided us with a personal escort to the international terminal. We made our flight without time to sit down in Cebu which ended up being kind of perfect because by the time we got into the plane the kids were ready to sit down and relax for a little bit and settled down for the quick flight to Hong Kong.
Our longest flight is our sleeping time and Brayden was amazing. I think he slept for all but 1 1/2 hours of the 11 hours. Unfortunately Sydney and Madison were puking throughout the flight which really sucked and really stank. I was so thankful when we arrived in Vancouver and I knew that for the week our travelling was complete. If I had to continue on to Lethbridge I think would have cried.
It was so nice to quickly get our luggage and get out to our waiting family! The air was so warm and crisp as we stepped outside. We took the sky train to the hotel, dumped off the luggage, got ourselves a shower and took off for dinner and a stroll along the beach. Apparently it was the first real day of summer with record breaking highs and the beach was packed with runner, bikers, sunbathers and news crews enjoying the first day of summer weather. The kids were so happy to be running around and although they looked a little bit like death from the flight they really didn't act like they had no sleep in the last 24 hours. But for me, bedtime could not come soon enough! Yay for being back in Canada and yay for hot weather!