Toby came and picked me up in Camarillo. I found out that she had discovered our Rat Terrier is not a “mouse” terrier. Apparently, the mouse jumped out of the sink and when she put Petey up on the counter to chase the mouse, he freaked out and just stood there cowering. The mouse ran behind the stove. Ugh. We made it to Grandma Jo’s house in good time. She had graciously offered to watch Petey and Ginger while we are in Kentucky. After fixing a couple of things on her computer, we left for the LAX motel. When we got to our room, we found a place for the kids to sleep. We spread out their sleeping bags on the floor of the closet. Shhhh! we told them it was a tunnel room for kids. We got to bed at a decent hour. But, our room was right at the top of the stairs and so for about 3 hours we could hear everyone walking by, dragging, rolling their luggage and talking on their cell phones. Also, the motel was strangely laid out, and we had 3 exterior walls that let in a lot of road noise from Century and Aviation boulevards. So, we did not have a good night sleep. Additionally, the parking lot at the motel was really small. We had been under the impression that we could leave our van at the motel while we were traveling and take advantage of the motel airport shuttle. No dice. So it was off to parking lot B. We found a good spot and got good seats on the bus to the airport. When we did the self check in at the Northwest kiosk, we found out that the first leg of our flight was delayed due to mechanical issues. The plane was broken in Las Vegas. God was looking out for us, in that the person who was putting the routing tags on our luggage decided to help us right at the kiosk rather than send us over to the line where all the other stranded passengers were being sent. While Toby worked with the ticketing agent, I moved the kids and the luggage away from the kiosks so that other passengers could find out their flights were delayed. I entertained Max and Lucy with thumb-wrestling and such. One thing they were doing was pushing on the very heavy (50 pounds exactly, good job Toby) luggage. This pushing of the luggage turned into pushing me, and in an effort to keep them distracted I pushed them back, very gently, of course. Well, Lucy got more and more dramatic as my pushes got lighter and lighter and after taking 5 or 6 steps backward with a “Whoa, Whoa” she tripped on her feet. Instead of falling on her bottom, she fell flat on her back and smacked her head on the tile floor. Screaming 3 year old. After about 45 minutes the Northwest ticketing agent was able to get us tickets on United into Louisville, KY. We decided going to Louisville was better than overnighting somewhere and hoping to get onto a flight to Lexington. At LAX, the Northwest terminal is number 2 and the United terminal is number 7. We had quite a trip to make and we had no assigned seats and the plane left in an hour. Most other airports I have been in recently have great trains or trams or something to send passengers between terminals. Not so with LAX. We got back onto a bus to fight our through traffic over to terminal 7. At this point, Max and Lucy were really ready to get on the plane. After waiting in line to talk to a United ticketing agent, we found out that she could not assign us seats on the plane. We had seats, but since it was a full flight, the boarding gate agent would be assigning our seats. We thought that Toby should go ahead to get to the gate and I would bring the kids at a more leisurely pace. Then we hit TSA. We had our boarding passes and IDs ready and handed everything to the agent in front of the security queue. We got to the metal detectors and the next agent asked for boarding passes. What? Toby had put the boarding passes in her back pack since we had just shown them to the agent 4 feet behind us. The TSA guy says “He is a blue shirt, I am a white shirt.” Meanwhile our bags have gone through the screening machine. We have 4 backpacks and are trying to yell at a different TSA agent to describe which back pack. It is the last one he picks up, of course. Then we try to describe what pocket the passes are in. Finally, he gives up and takes my suggestion to bring the bag back to us so we can get the boarding passes out. Then when the first TSA agent looks at our boarding passes, he says that our entire family has been selected by United to receive special screening. What fun it was to watch Lucy get frisked. Eventually we made it through TSA and Toby sped off toward our gate. By the time we caught up to her, she had already spoken to the gate agent and found out that we had 4 single middle seats across 6 rows. Toby got the impression from the gate agent that nothing was going to be done about that. We decided to get a sandwhich for the flight from a restaurant. Lucy had started off rolling along her own little roller suitcase, but had given up because her hand was tired, so I was carrying the suitcase for her. In line at Ruby’s she took a step towards me at the same time I shifted the suitcase and I clonked her on the top of her head with the corner of the suitcase. Now we have a screaming 3 year old, again. I got Lucy settled down and we went to wait at the gate. They called Toby’s name and when Toby came back, she was smiling. The gate agent had really come through. We had 3 seats in a row and 1 seat 2 rows up in an exit row. Toby is sitting with the kids (man, they are loud) and I am in the middle seat of the exit row, with the extra 5 inches of leg room. We are flying into Chicago O’Hare and need to go through the whole ordeal of getting seats together for the leg from Chicago to Louisville. But we are moving forward.