Full planes, Full Stomachs, Full Diapers

I don't know who designs airplanes, but I can't imagine that they really think too much about the people who have to ride in them for multiple hours.

I guess part of the issue might be that they plan for planes to not be 100% full, but on the two flights I was on this past weekend, they were as full as can be.

If you've been in the coach section of an airplane recently you may have noticed the fact that they only give you about 17-inches of space from shoulder to shoulder. I don't know about you, but my shoulders are a little wider than 17-inches. So, if my shoulders are wider than 17 inches, the guy next to me has shoulders wider than 17-inches, and the person next to him has shoulders wider than 17 inches who loses? The person sitting in the middle seat, that's who! Making things worse is the fact that the person in the seat in front of me decided to recline his seat back, basically putting that seat in my lap. I've never really been claustrophobic, but I was starting to feel it on that flight!

But all of that flying was worth it! Arriving in Minnesota to see our new Nieces and Nephew was awesome. I got to hang-out with my 2-year-old nephew as well, he's a bundle of fun with more energy than I can imagine. The newborns are pretty cool, they sleep a lot and of course eat a lot and that means that they also fill their share of diapers.

Somehow I was able to get out of having to change any diapers all weekend, I guess maybe I was just in the right place at the right time.

Oh, I did some feeding of the babies, it was pretty easy because they were hungry and so putting the bottle near their mouth was all it took. On one or two occasions the bottle was not nearly enough to satisfy them, so we had to jump into a quick back-up plan to get another bottle ready fast while I tried to keep baby happy.


Of course the reason for our trip was for the Baptism of our new nieces and nephew. It was quite fun to be a part of that experience. When our 2-year-old nephew was baptized, that was
on Father's Day, so it was particular neat that on Mother's Day the newborns would be baptized.

The church that my brother's family attends does their baptism as a separate service only once a month, apparently due to the number of baptisms that the church does each month (often something like 15). At first I was kinda set-off by this because as a Lutheran, one of the most important parts of Baptism is being a community event where the community welcomes the child to the family of Christ and makes promises to the child. But, seeing how 15 baptisms a month could be quite a disruption to the flow of worship, it makes a lot of sense ... and when you have that many baptisms going on at once, it really makes for quite a nice service anyway.

So, due to having triplets, instead of the parents holding the baby for the baptism, each of the godparents got to hold one of the kids during the baptism ... so I got to hold my new nephew, Linus, while the pastor poured water and said prayers. That's the kind of thing that will stay with me for my whole life.

Of course, just as all good things, this weekend had to come to an end and on Monday I found

myself crammed on an airplane yet again (as a note, I can't remember the last time I was this far back on an airplane, usually I sit somewhere near the wing or in front, but this time we ended up in the second to last row of the plane). Before getting on the plane I found myself hungry, so I wandered to the food court area of the airport (actually I started for McDonald's hoping they were still serving breakfast, but no luck) hoping to find a Sbarro, but alas the Sbarro that was in the food court was no longer. It apparently was taken over by Famiglia Pizza which just didn't look as good. How sad. When I get a pizza craving it is usually for a certain kind of pizza, and in this case it was for Sbarro. I settled for California Pizza Kitchen which was alright, but not quite what I had in mind.

I'm hoping to get caught up on my blogging. I have a few great thoughts that I want to share, but I just haven't had a chance. So, that's my commitment for the next week, while I finish up my last papers of the semester and go to my last class on Thursday I hope to update y'all with the latest thoughts from my head.

And now, I must do the laundry.