Havoc Wreaking Ash

This is quite a long account, but something I definitely wanted to keep for posterity!

The above title is one description of why I have been away from blogging.
The other would be getting ready for my now 5 year old’s birthday party that was on Sunday.
Let me set the stage for you.  My hubby had a business trip to London last week.  As he was away I was busy preparing for the birthday bash.

Others may have a much more dramatic story as to how the Eyjafjallajokull (AY-yah-FYEL-lah-YER-kuhl   <----did that help much?  No?  Me either) eruption in Iceland has temporarily altered their lives, but we sure got a doozy of a family story out of it!
On Thursday, in the midst of making marshmallow fondant for Karis’ birthday goodies, I got a call from my friend and colleague, Julie whose husband was with my husband in London.  She broke the news of the ash that had grounded flights in London.
Having grown up in Alaska with active volcanoes I was not a newbie to the damage that volcanic ash can do.  But it was still not fun knowing that our daughter’s birthday was just 3 days away and daddy might not be there.
I think our hubbies did not fully grasp the seriousness or the time period that we were looking at for their delay.  They kept saying how their flight wasn’t canceled yet and of course we knew the airports were making decisions every 6-12 hours out.  But we knew by Friday morning that they would not be making it home that evening.
The reality of them even being home by Sunday was not looking possible.  And by Saturday most trains and buses were booked up through Wednesday.
After our hubbies talking with some colleagues there in London it was decided that someone could drive them to Prague.  The first person that offered needed to come for business anyway, but in looking he couldn’t find his passport.  Then we were back to square one.  Then our supervisor agreed & decided he would pack up his family and they would take a road trip to Prague and drop off our hubbies.
Us wives did not learn until Sunday that late Saturday evening the plan was changed again.  The reality of driving that far with a wife and daughter sunk in leaving our hubbies wracking their brains as what to do next.
Luckily and thankfully we have colleagues with our organization spread out all over Europe and they had the thought to call one of our media team members in Germany to take them part of the way.  He lives in the northwest part of Germany and he could take them as far as Nurnburg.
So, they made it to Germany in good time having to purchase first class fair to get through the Chunnel
(that’s all that was available with this ash issue).  Although expensive, they were able to breeze past the long wait to get on the train that goes through the chunnel as well as receiving food and other various things that first class provides and get on an hour ahead of schedule.
The only thing that was not arranged was how they would get home to Prague from Nurnburg.  After calling me and breaking the news (I actually thought my hubby was kidding me that he wasn’t coming all the way in one swoop from London.  He likes to do that to me, so I thought he was joking!!) I got on the phone to Julie and told her that I was ready to pack up the kids in the car and let’s go get our guys!  She was in total agreement.
Of course, I had a party to throw first (I’ll give many more details next time)!!
Let me back up and say that when Karis first learned that her daddy was most likely not going to make it home for her party, she did not want to have one.  She cried, which in turn made me cry.  I was also disappointed (and so was daddy).  I was actually somewhat relieved as we were expecting quite a crowd and to think of throwing a party by myself made my head spin.
But, it wasn’t long and she changed her tune and got quite cranky at the thought of not having a party.  At first I couldn’t begin to think of doing it all myself, but from somewhere I had a peace about it and figured that even if it wasn’t perfect we would have a nice party.  I even had a colleague friend call me up on Saturday evening and offer to take my kids for dinner and some play time.  That was a huge help to me (Thanks Jennie!)!
While at the party many learned of the situation and some of our neighbor friends graciously offered to take my kids for the night.  That would make our travels SO much easier.  I greatly appreciated it and since Julie was in possession of one of our other colleague’s vehicles, we decided we could just use it to go get them.
So after getting my kids packed up and a few things set (although leaving behind a HUGE mess in my house....more on that later) we were on our way.
Traffic was very light since it was Sunday.  We were driving along and Julie started noticing a light that would flash and on off quickly.  She said it looked like a car with something sticking out the top.  I tried to see it and every time I looked it would flash off.  Then it came on and never went off and Julie noticed that she was loosing power.  We were becoming quite worried at this point thinking of 2 females and 2 kids on the side of the road not speaking much of the language at all.  The car then stabilized at about 90 kilometers (about 56 miles per hour), but kept going.  We began to pray that we could just get to a gas station.  About that time one of our hubbies called to see where we were and told them of our car trouble.  Luckily we were only a few kilometers away from a town called Plzen where we had two colleague families, one being on our media team.  So I wasn’t too worried knowing they were near by.  I soon learned that Jerry immediately called Marc. We found a gas station at this point and pulled over.  I decided to contact Scott, who is on our team.  He has taken car of the office vehicles in the past and I thought he might be able to give some insight on what to do.
He suggested we let it sit for a minute while still running and then maybe turn it off to see if it somehow resets itself.
We were a little leery of turning it off and he completely understood that.  He thought we could go on to Plzen.  By this time we were in touch with Marc and were making plans to meet him and Larry somewhere.  Then we would decide about what to do with our hubbies.
After missing our turn off (in our defense we were closer than we thought and were paying more attention to the car than the exits) we rearranged our meeting spot.  Once we got to our meeting point we turned off the car, waited a few minutes, turned it back on and the light was off.  Ok?!
We waited on the guys and honestly, our hope was that we would meet, them having talked to our husbands and the men would give us the plan from this point.    It didn’t work out that way and we spent more time hashing out what to do from here. 
We thought of us catching a train, the guys catching a train, the guys in Plzen going to fetch them.  No one could decide.  Part of the problem of them getting on a train was first, how do we know they would have been able to catch a train?  All of Europe was affected by this ash with many travels displaced.  Second, they had no idea how to get to a train station.  None of them being familiar with the area they were in.
I finally spoke up and just asked if the guys could go get them.  A plan was put in motion.  We also decided that us ladies would wait in Plzen for our guys to get there and then drive the rest of the way that night home all together in the gimpy car.
Off to Marc & Kellye’s we went to impose and crash until our guys got to us.
We chatted, their kid’s played.  I was exhausted from lack of sleep and party planning the last few days.  I was fading, but we had a good time chatting and catching up.  Time passed and our guys showed up at 12:40 am. 
At this point one of Julie’s boys started feeling bad and quickly began feeling worse.  We started loading up in the car and he was feeling ill with a headache, stomach ache and his legs were weak.  It just seemed to be one more thing to add to this CRAZY situation.  Every time something else happened Julie and I would look at each other and say “this is another thing to add to the blog!!”  Ha!
They decided that he just wasn’t feeling good and needed to wait until morning to take a train back to Prague while Jerry and I drove the gimpy car back at 1 am.  The car still showed signs of lagging with the light flashing a time or two but never staying on longer than a second.  There was hardly anyone on the roads and we flew into Prague in good time and fell into bed at 3 am.  Then woke at about 7:30 to pick up our kids at our friend's across the street.  What an ordeal!!  But I was glad to have my hubby home!!
More to come soon!