Here is a run down of how moving day went. An ungodly 4am wakeup. By 4:45 am the uber arrives and we are on our way to the Charlotte airport. Me, Kylie and the Bits in the uber. CJ (who will be joining us in Costa Rica in August), Jeff, our 16 pieces of luggage and 4 pet carriers in our minivan.

Putting every cent I spend on my American Airlines credit card paid off in a big way as I achieved platinum status. This allowed us to skip the long regular people special assistance line and make our way to the priority special assistance line. And even better Jeff finally appreciates my spending. The lugging of all of the baggage, kids and pets over to the Priority line was a bit trying but it was worth it. The folks behind the counter were super nice and very helpful as we placed bin after bin on the scale. There was a bit of confusion about out pet paperwork and I did get a little concerned with the counter person said, “You’re missing their certificates of good health.” We managed to resolve that when I handed her the pile of papers the vet had given me that she told me I probably wouldn’t need but to bring anyway.

Jeff, CJ and I deserve some sort of medal because we weighed each bag and bin on our household scale and rearranged things until all but one was under the 50lb limit. I am not going to share the fortune we spent on pets and luggage but at least we only had one that was overweight. And that many more American Airlines points to maintain out platinum status.

We got Global Entry before leaving to make our returns easy which also means we have TSA pre-check. Jeff, the Bits, pets and I went through security without Kylie who still needs her Global Entry interview. She was devastated that she had to leave the chaos of us for the regular security line.

Immediately prior to heading to security, we strapped the Go Pros on to the girls. Evie kept turning it to the floor and Charlotte didn’t like wearing it so we have no Go Pro footage. I did take a lot of videos and am going to try to figure out TikTok in the near future. So perhaps there will be some video evidence of this entire process.

As my previous post revealed, getting through security with the pets was causing me a great deal of anxiety….Like waking-up-covered-in-sweat-level anxiety. Turns out it wasn’t so bad. The escape proof cat leashes I had bought were useless as only one cat was still leashed when I opened their carriers. The other two had seen “escape proof ” and laughed as they easily wriggled out of their harnesses.

I went back and forth from one side of security to the other- removing a pet from a carrier, grabbing said pet like my life depended on it, walking through the security tunnel thingy, waiting for the actual carrier to come through the xray machine, shoving said pet back in the carrier, walking back through the security tunnel thingy and grabbing another pet.

Only one cat mauled me and it was not the feral one. Go figure. The leash would have been handy as I could have dropped her and dragged her through security but she was one of the two that had managed to outsmart the escape proof harness. So instead, I squeezed her tightly as she continuously impaled me. Really, I’m a hero.

Of course the Priority check-in was on the opposite side of the airport as the gate we were departing from. As we were making out way to the gate, Evie (the 5 year old) decided she was done walking and sat down in the middle of the terminal crying. I’m not gonna lie. I too was pretty tired, sick of walking and considering crying but I was also so relieved that we had made it this far that I managed to hold it together. Kylie, who had effortlessly made it through security without pets or being impaled, received my SOS text and rescued me by chasing Evie to the gate. Kylie is also a hero.

We arrived at our gate with 2 hours to spare. This was fine by me as my anxiety about luggage and pets and all the things was so high that I had zero regrets about our 4am wakeup. I didn’t really sleep anyway. We had time for breakfast and Jeff treated me to a $35 Bloody Mary – which may go down in the record books as the most expensive Bloody Mary I have ever had. Clearly I am not the only one working to maintain Platinum status!

The Bloody Mary defintely helped take the edge off. And it was nice to finally breathe. Stay tuned for the next post to hear about boarding, immigration, customs and the ride to our rental.