A year of flights

On Sept. 27th I took my first free flight to Texas and haven't slowed down since! This year we have made a special effort to take advantage of Dave's job's benefit of free (stand-by) flights.  We've had several disappointments and lots of changing plans and last-minute switches, but for the most part I think we've exceeded our expectations using stand-by travel.  We've never gotten stuck in a place or spent unnecessary hours in airports (ok, I guess Dave has, but as for myself and the kids, we have been lucky).
We've been able to get to 10 states and a foreign country.  I've been to Utah 18 times.  We've been many places several times (a free place to stay or free transportation makes the trip easy and cheap!)

According to our estimates, we have these stats in a year of travel (not including road trips):

Destinations: 11
Trips: 31
Flights: 236 (Dave-55, Jamie- 71, Jackson- 54, Hallie-56)
Miles: 222,238 (I've gone 70,000 miles, the others are around 50,000)
Cost for flights taken if we would have paid for them: $40,000
Time spent in the air: 200 hours

When Dave first got his job I talked with a friend who had been traveling with US Airways for 2 years.  I asked how hard it was to travel and if they did it often.  She counted and said she had been on 35 trips in 2 years.  I was absolutely amazed at that number, and yet we will easily be on 35 trip within 13 months - I would never believe it except that I was there on all the trips. :)

For the amount of time spent on flights, I am surprised at the few number of photos we have.  I guess you never take photos of regular everyday life, just the abnormal stuff.  Plus, look how terrible they all turned out . . .not a great angle for photo shoots.

    We still have plans and hope to get to many more places.  We are hoping for Washington State, Albuquerque (there's got to be something to do there!), Denver, Durango, Portland, San Diego (Legoland), Boise, Alaska, New York, Florida, Kuaui, Oahu, the Big Island, Monterey, Grenada, Del Rio,  and any other place we get invited.  For the immediate future though, we just have plans to visit family for baby blessings, sealings and other holidays.