Spare in the air

Going through the phone camera again and noticed I am behind AGAIN on updates.  Yes I have four other international vacations to get caught up on also, so here is the quick post to clean out some semi-recent activity.

For my winter birthday, a group of friends headed out to Colorado for some skiing.  The parents of a friend had a sweet ski-in ski-out condo at Keystone.  It has been established that I am more sporty than Jewed Law.  In high school, I was captain of the basketball team...he was the lead actor in the school plays.  After every race or athletic event he would claim, "you win this one, but wait till I get you skiing."  Sure enough, he is golden on skis.  Smoked my ass like I was a novice.  Even the seasoned skiers were super impressed.  Mama so proud.
The group consisted of three guy-girl couples and the 18month old daughter of one pair.  Since most of the ski lifts only take 4-people, we normally had to split up into 3-3 or 4-2.  One time, the three ladies were grouped together and we gossiped about...wait for it...boys.  M asked me when Jewed Law was going to propose.  I thought about it for a moment and said "I don't know, my birthday is this weekend and I don't think he would do it then, but then when he asked me if I wanted my present before the trip or on the birthday I said birthday unless the gift was too large to pack (we wanted one carry on and one duffle bag only), and he said no problem it is tiny...oh my God he might propose on my birthday".  The evening of my birthday, the group surprised me with a cake & candles.  Jewed Law plopped down a small square blue box from Tiffany's.  Everyone was stunned into silence.  Spoiler alert, it wasn't a ring...just some lovely earrings.

All three couples were flying back on Sunday.  The couple with the child (M&D) picked a noon flight in order to get back home in time for the little one's bedtime.  The other couple and us had tickets on the last flight in order to get another 1/2 day of skiing in.  It started snowing the previous night and continued throughout the day.  We got 12" of fresh powder, but Denver was like fuck and started canceling all flights out.  When M&D were being re-booked, the soonest they could get back was two more days.  The group talked about other methods of getting back to Chicago, including renting a van and having three drivers go 24 hours straight.
We kept calling the airport and airline asking when our flight would be canceled so we could just get on with it.  They assured us our flight was still scheduled to leave, thus making it the ONLY flight leaving Denver that day.  Sure they were letting flights land, just no more leaving for some reason.  During the 4-hr drive down from the mountains (snow + weekend = parking lot on the highway to Denver) we still were being told the flight was going to leave so help them God, just maybe delayed a bit.  Sure enough, the flight is delayed 2hrs (making our departure closer to midnight) but they had us board even though all other gates were closed.  It was baffling why they would work so hard ship out the last flight of the day (which likely was the least book of them all).  Once we got on the plane, the reason became obvious...they need to fly the pilots back to Chicago.  Seriously, the plane could take say 100 people, and 65 of them were pilots.  Every row had two or three men in the white shirts with epaulets and the telltale cap.  Chicago is a major hub for Southwest Airlines (our carrier this trip), so they needed to get all those trapped pilots back in order to avoid canceling some more flights tomorrow.  We kind of in a twisted way wanted some one to come out of the cockpit announcing there was something wrong with the pilot and if anyone else on board could fly the plane...then imagine 50 hands shoot up in the air.  Ha!