Phoenix & The Series of Miraculous (& Stressful!!) Events

A few weeks ago, Lydia and I, along with my mom and dad and sister, went down to Phoenix to see my brother and his family and my other brother and his family who had flown in from the East coast and were already down there. We had a fun time together, even if it was only for a short weekend trip.

But I almost didn't make it down there.

And it's a total series of miracles that I did make it.

And the whole experience made me think I want to trade my brain in for a new one. That's a totally do-able thing, right??

Our flight left on a Thursday mid-morning from Provo, which meant that we had to leave our house pretty early to get down there on time. We decided to stay at my parent's house to save us on a little bit of time in the morning. Dave left early for work, and mom and I got up and packed and ready with almost an hour of time to spare! Go us, right?? So we decided to stop at the fabric store on the way out of town because they were having a great sale on minky. While we were at the store, I remembered that I hadn't added Lydia as a lap child to my ticket yet. Mom had already checked us in a day ahead of time, so I thought it would be super easy to just add a baby. We called the airline and had them add her, but they had to uncheck me in to do it, and they said they couldn't check me back in over the phone and that I had to do that at the airport. We thought, "Okay, we just need to make sure we get to the airport in enough time to check me in." We were flying Allegiant, and they are nazis about getting checked in on time. If you are checked in a minute past the hour ahead of time you're supposed to be, sometimes they don't print your boarding pass for you and you can't fly. BUT - no biggie. We just had to get to the airport in time. We would just leave now and be fine. Then, the person on the phone reminded us that we also needed to have Lydia's birth certificate for her to fly.

Birth certificate?! I completely forgot about grabbing that before I left my house!

So - we had to make a mad dash home to get Lydia's birth certificate. My house is 30 minutes from my mom's house in the opposite direction from Provo, so we were starting to get really nervous about making it to Provo on time. We still had to stop in Salt Lake and pick up my dad from work, and then pick up my sister from BYU, and THEN we could go to the airport. So, the cute ladies at the fabric store told us to get the heck out of there and that they would cut the fabric we wanted and that mom could pay for it later. Bless them.

We had about 50 minutes to spare, which is the EXACT amount of time we figured it would take to get to my house and back with no traffic. Or weather. Which, there happened to be both. We rushed home to my house as fast as we could, but up north by my house it was snowing. So, the roads were slippery and we didn't want to go too fast. All this time, I'm just PRAYING that we make it in time. We turned onto my road and my mom's car started slipping and slipped into the curb. No big deal, because no one else was on the road. But a little scary still. I get to my house and the garage door keypad opener won't work. And all of the doors of my house are locked. And I don't have my keys with me! Luckily, I remembered that we have a spare key hidden, but since it was snowing, it was completely covered. So, there I am, digging through the snow in my bare hands trying to find our key to open the door. I finally find it, open the door, run upstairs as fast as my legs will carry me, grab the certificate, fly back down the stairs, lock the door, hide the key again, and hop in the car. It took me less than a minute to do all of that. Talk about speedy!

So we start driving back down towards Salt Lake, and the further south we get, the better the weather gets. We got about to Farmington, and it wasn't snowing at all anymore. The roads looked fine, and we were just about to merge onto I-15 from highway 89. We came around a curve in the road and all of a sudden we see an incident management car parked RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREEWAY MERGING RAMP. There was a slight accident on the shoulder way far ahead of the truck. But for some reason, the truck decided he needed to park his truck right in the middle of the road, around an almost blind curve. Well, mom slammed on her brakes, but the road was icy and we didn't know it. We slid and were sliding perpendicular to the road and heading straight for the truck. We weren't slowing down at all. Mom told me later that she knew she wasn't going to stop and so she was trying to figure out how to weave herself around the truck. I thought we were going to slam into the truck. All of a sudden, the car stopped, just short of the incident management truck. We should have run right into it. It was seriously a miracle that we didn't. Our hearts were in our throats and we were kind of in shock for a while afterwards. The truck took his sweet time moving out of the road. We were probably waiting for about 5 minutes while the truck did nothing but sit there and cause more people to slam on their brakes around that almost blind curve. He finally moved out of the way and we could keep driving. Neither of us could believe that we hadn't crashed. We knew right away that Heavenly Father was watching out for us, because our car really should have kept going. It was a miracle.

After we had calmed down a bit, we called my dad and told him he needed to be waiting for us outside of his office because we still had to be to the Provo airport in time (not one minute late!) for me to re-check in. Dad was waiting for us right when we pulled up to his office. He jumped in, and we continued to Provo.

Whew! The crazy nightmare morning was over!!

Or so I thought. In reality, it was just beginning.

When we got to BYU to pick up my sister, we parked just outside the campus police building to wait for her. I smelled a stink in Lydia's diaper, so I was reaching in my diaper bag to get some wipes and a fresh diaper when I realized that my wallet, that is ALWAYS in my diaper bag, wasn't there. I looked all over in the car and it was nowhere to be seen. My heart just sunk. How are you supposed to fly on an airplane with absolutely ZERO identification!?!? I was sure that I wasn't going to make it, and I just wanted to cry. I was feeling so overwhelmed when my dad suggested I run into the campus police office to see if they could print me a temporary ID card or something that at least had my picture on it since I had attended BYU earlier. And by earlier, I mean 3 years earlier. He said it was a long shot, but it was the best shot I had.

I ran as fast as I could into the police office (since we only had about 20 minutes at this point to make it to check in at the airport before they wouldn't print my boarding pass), and explained my situation to an officer in there. He pulled up my information sure enough, but said he couldn't do much for me since I wasn't a current student there. He couldn't print an ID card at all. The only thing he could print was a paper copy of an information page that had my picture, birthday, and social security number on it. But, he said he couldn't even print that until he had cleared it with his supervisor for security purposes. Are you kidding me!? I was clearly the person in the picture, and I was running out of time! After what seemed like forever, he finally got the okay to print it. I ran out of there with a flimsy piece of paper in my hand that I hoped would allow me to somehow get on the airplane. I wasn't very hopeful though.

When we got to the airport (with 1 minute to spare!!!) I ran in and tried to check in at the counter. The lady said, "Do you have your boarding pass?", to which I had to tell her no, because they had to uncheck me in to add Lydia as a lap child, and they couldn't re-check me in. So she said, "Okay, can I see your ID?" To which I had to say, "Well, there's the other half of the story. I don't have any." She looked at me like I was crazy, but I think she could tell how frazzled I was because she somehow printed it for me anyway. I had made it past the first hurdle! I had my boarding pass in hand, and my stupid paper copy of my BYU information, and walked so nervously towards the TSA officer. He asked to see my ID, and I had to explain the situation to him. He looked like he believed me, but he said he couldn't do anything for me unless I had something in my possession with my address on it. Which I didn't, because EVERYTHING was in my wallet which I DIDN'T HAVE. Oh, it was so frustrating! He started naming off all of these things that could have my address on it: Insurance card(nope, in the wallet), checkbook (nope, in my wallet), library card (nope, in my wallet), prescription - YES, ACTUALLY! Lydia was on antibiotics at the time for a double ear infection, and I had her medicine with me in the diaper bag. Which was in the car. So - I had to run back out to the car, get the diaper bag, get the medicine bottle, and run back up to the counter. He still wasn't thrilled with the bottle because it didn't have MY name on it, only Lydia's, but it did have our address on it and miraculously he said that it would work. He said they would need to do an extensive pat down on me and all of my things, but that he would let me through. HALLELUJAH! They did give me a pretty good pat down, but we finally made it through security and into the terminal.

HOLY COW. I was a wreck at this point - just so drained from all of the stress and worry of the morning. I couldn't believe that they were letting me on the plane. Now, I could finally start worrying about the next problem. Where was my wallet?? The TSA officer told me that Dave was going to have to FedEx my license to me in Arizona because what I had wouldn't be sufficient to get home. That would have been great, if I knew where my wallet WAS. I had absolutely no clue, because I didn't even know it was missing from my diaper bag. I had no idea where to even have Dave look for it. He was busy at work when I called him anyway, so I didn't even have time to really worry about it yet. We decided that when I landed in Phoenix I should ask the TSA officers there if what I had was going to be enough to get me back or if I really had to have my license mailed to me, because that was expensive and I seriously had no clue where it was. We boarded the plane, and the flight down there was relatively smooth (Lydia was a COMPLETE MESS for the first half of the flight, but then luckily she fell asleep) and when we landed I went straight to the TSA guys to explain my situation to them. The officer that I asked said that what I had was actually better than what they get sometimes, and that I didn't need to have Dave send it down at all, that it would be fine. He said that they would do a +1 on me (whatever that meant), but that it should be fine.

SERIOUSLY!?!?

Well, he made me able to relax a little bit, and I didn't worry about Dave having to ship it down to me. I could FINALLY enjoy the vacation that I almost didn't make it to! We had a great time together. We went to the zoo, we went to a movie, we had some yummy food, we went to my niece and nephew's soccer games, we played games, we went swimming, and it was so fun to be with everyone.

My first second of true calm all morning long.

I just love these two babies together. 

I was so sad when it was time to leave and I was still a little nervous about not having any ID with me, so we left even earlier than we needed to just in case I ran into a problem with security coming home.

Which I did.

When I got the the TSA officer, he looked at me like I was NUTS when I told him that another officer there had told him it was fine and that they would just do a +1. He said it wasn't really fine, that they would do a +1 on me for sure, but that it didn't guarantee anything. He told me that the paper BYU information thing was useless because it wasn't government issued and that I was going to need to come with him for awhile. I was pretty panicked. He pulled me off to the side of the security lines, and explained to me what a +1 is. Basically, they have to call Washington, D.C. and have them look up your information over the phone. The officer in Phoenix then asks me questions that the people in DC can verify. If I answered all the questions right, then I could be cleared to go. I was nervous, even though I was just going to be telling them the complete honest truth about myself. I answered all of the questions right and after an extensive pat down, was cleared to board.

As I sat on the plane I couldn't help but think of how miraculous and lucky I had been to make it safely to Phoenix and back again. And even though it was SOOO incredibly stressful and awful having to through the nightmare of getting there and back, when I stopped to look at the big picture, I realized all of the little things that went RIGHT to make sure that I was able to travel to and from safely:

• Mom and I left with a lot of extra time in the morning, so we had enough time to run back to my house for Lydia's birth certificate. 
• I have a spare key to my house which I could use since our garage door wouldn't open.
• We somehow survived what should have been a horrible car crash.
• When we got to Provo, we parked outside of the campus police office which gave my dad the idea to have my run in there to ask them if they could do anything for me.
• I had actually attended BYU as a previous student. If I hadn't done that, the campus officer really couldn't have done anything for me, and the TSA officer at the Provo airport would have never let me board.
• I made it to the check-in counter with one minute to spare!
• The lady at the counter miraculously printed my boarding pass with no ID.
• Lydia had an ear infection and so I had medicine with me that had our address on it.
• Both TSA officers let me board the planes to and from with no government issued ID. That is the biggest miracle of all.

I never thought that going through all of that would strengthen my testimony. Haha. But it did! I felt so sure that Heavenly Father was watching out for me every step of my journey and putting all of the pieces together for me so that I could have a fun time with my family even though I was a complete idiot and forgot to bring my ID. He knew that the trip was important to me, and he helped me get there and back again safely. I am absolutely sure of that, and I feel so grateful for everything He did to get me there and back. 

Now, I know what you're thinking now. Where was your wallet!? Well, it took me a few days of being home to find it! And it's not stressful at all when your wallet and all of your personal information is MISSING. Well, it turns out it was in the couch at my mom's house. I had put my diaper bag on the couch and it had fallen on its side and the wallet had just fallen out and gotten wedged between the couch cushions. Dave was the hero there - he suggested looking in the couch. I'm so lucky I have people around me who are smarter than me.

So - the moral of the story is this. DON'T EVER FORGET YOUR ID WHEN YOU FLY. FOR YOU OR FOR YOUR BABY. And also, that Heavenly Father is real and is aware of our needs and our unique circumstances and helps even in the situations you think He might not be real interested in. If it is important to you, it is important to Him, and He will always be there to help you.

Now, with that being said, can I get my new brain now!?!?

And if you read my entire saga, then enjoy a picture of the cutest 1 year old around!