As you can see, we left Tullibody very early in the morning. We had to get up at 4, but as we were going for so long, it was cheaper to get a taxi there and back than park, so we just had a nervous wait that the guy would turn up. He did.
We made it in plenty of time, but unfortunately the queue at Edinburgh Airport for BA was so long that after well over an hour we had to be rushed to the front of the queue with loads of others for our Heathrow flight. At one point they radioed one of the woman checking in our bags saying they were closing our flight, and she overruled them saying she still had a couple of families checking in.
After some hurry, we made it on the plane about 5 minutes before the scheduled takeoff time, and sat on the tarmac for about 25 minutes before being told that three people had checked in but had decided not to fly. We then had to wait a further 20-30 minutes for their baggage to be taken off the plane, and consequently were late to Heathrow.
When we got to Heathrow and tried to get through security to our BA flight, we were told we'd been bumped onto a later flight. The upside of this was we had an hour or so to get something to eat. The downside was that we had to change terminals meaning we had to get on a bus. We got grilled by some American Airlines woman before getting on to the bus to change terminal who seemed particularly interested in why I had retired, and exactly what the database I'd worked with before held data on. I can't imagine it would have made any difference. Michael and Emma took it all well, though.
The watched loads of films on the Heathrow to LA leg of the journey. Michael was beside me, and I even managed to convince him to watch one he hadn't watched before (Ant Man)! We got a central isle of 4 seats as a family which was much appreciated. The people who checked us in were great in making sure we were sat together.
When we got to LA about 6pm their time (2 am Tullibody time), the kids were doing well, but were starting to get a little sleepy. They napped a little in the Car Rental place, then conked out on the way to a Family get-together with Shannon's Family who lived about an hour away from the airport. They did extremely well given that they were awake essentially from 4 am until about 6 am the next day.
The family gathering was nice, and it was great to meet everyone. I was doing surprisingly well given my health, so thankfully didn't need to use the part of the house David had looked out for me to rest if needed.
Unfortunately Camille broke her arm at the family thing. She fell off a climbing frame in the back garden and landed badly. It wasn't really obvious at first, but Alan and Alyson made an appointment with the local A&E, and she had a fracture above her elbow.
The place we stayed in Yorba Linda was lovely. The rest of them had been there for a few days before us, and had sorted out some issues with lack of furniture and cutlery, but were still a little upset about them. The house was spacious and well decorated, but was missing some obvious things like curtains. It had really expensive looking speakers next to the unbelievably huge TV (80 inches I think), but they were not plugged in.
Unfortunately, our luggage had not made it to California with us. Sarah had thankfully packed some essentials into our travel on luggage, having learnt from our not having luggage to two days in Copenhagen last year (still to be blogged). Thankfully we got a call at the gathering that two of our three bags had turned up, and Shannon's brother-in-law offered to go pick them up. It should have been an hour long journey, but traffic more than doubled that.
Michael and Emma had to sleep on blow up beds or camp beds as there weren't enough beds in the place, but they didn't mind at all.
The next day was the wedding.
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