We flew Delta and they charge $25 for the first checked bag and $35 for the 2nd but you can have one carry on and one personal item per person. Rather than pay $50 roundtrip for a big bag I thought that since I had to pay for Ry, and he gets a carry on plus personal item, I'd just cram everything we need into two carry on bags. Which in theory would totally work. My mom ended up checking a bag and I put two dresses plus a small cooler of frozen milk in her bag. But everything else I was able to cram into those carry on suitcases (I'm pretty impressed at myself for packing two children plus myself into those small bags and my mom had to use a giant suitcase plus carry on for herself)
So there we were Rex dropped us off curbside and it was my mom, myself carrying Colton in the front pack, Rylan in a small umbrella stroller... and our luggage. We had one large bag, three carry on suitcases, three personal items (large backpack for me, small backpack for Ry and a tote for my mom) sweatshirts for me and my mom, blankets for the boys, and two carseats. We got a cart to take us to the check in counter, and checked in ONE carseat and ONE large bag... which meant we still had three carry ons, three personal items, sweatshirts, blankets, a stroller and one carseat... and we had to get this all through security. The people in the security line were very friendly and let us go through the family line so we didnt wait in the big long line (what a relief) My mom is such a stress case though and tried to rush through the whole thing just throwing things on the conveyor belt. She worried too much about people behind us and it just made me more agitated. From the point of us having to break everything down; taking out our liquid ziplocks, laptops, taking off jewelry, taking colton out of the carrier, taking shoes off, it must have been at least a 30 minute process getting everything put back together.
The flight was good, it was a full flight and they asked for volunteers to check their bags (for free) and we jumped on the opportunity because we knew it would be a nightmare getting the bags on the plane. My aunt also caught the same flight we did so she could help with the baby wrangling. We caught a redeye and both kids slept through most of it. Ry cried about halfway through wanting to get out of his carseat, so I let him out for a bit and he got to sleep on my lap. Once we got to Ohio my sisters were there waiting at the airport for us so they got to help us carry our luggage and kids.
You would think that having such a traumatic experience wised us up for the flight home and we would pay the $25 to check our bags... nope.. we struggled through security all over again, and even worse we didn't check our bags at the gate and had to struggle down the plane with ALL that luggage. Luckily my aunt took the same flight home as well and she helped a LOT. As soon as we got home I told Rex "when we go to disneyland we are CHECKING our luggage" At least we're flying southwest and the first checked bags are free.
