Gwada 1st day

I really do not know why I stressed so much about my trip. I guess I really wanted to come home. It's my nephew Lorenzo's birthday today. It's my sister's on the 5th. The kids are on Holidays from school and my sister took a week off. It is the perfect setting for me. I get to maximize the time spent with them all.
I only really started to plan my trip last Friday. I had an idea of how I would get here but had not looked up the loads until then. I spent hours looking at all possible options to get me here and back to San Diego. On Friday, flights looked really good and I was happy. Saturday when I woke up and checked, things had changed dramatically. I went into panick mode. I did not want to waste days trying to get on a flight.
It was very frustrating because I had different tools to plan my trip and each of them had a different story. Our website from work gave weird info as the same flight listed in different itinireries came up with different loads for the same day. Did not seem very reliable. I then checked each airline's own website and looked up the seats still available for sale and got some numbers which on Friday make me feel good. On Saturday those numbers were not good anymore. Then when I called the airline to get listed on the flight, again I got not very reassuring words from the agent. I went to the airport in the afternoon to pay for my tickets. As Henry put it, it does sound that if I am buying tickets I am getting on the plane right? Wrong! We buy discounted tickets that allow us to get on any flight with the same routing. For example for my LAX-MIA ticket on American, I can get on any of their flights going to MIA at any time on any day, granted there are seats. I bought a bunch of different routing for my way back to give me as many options as possible.
Norman and Henry came to pick me up and drove me to the airport. I still had to buy my tickets on Air France (the most important) for the flights to and from Guadeloupe. I got those and the boys drop me at the commuter teminal. I checked in at the American Eagle counter and the agent (a very nice lady) told me that "tonight is a great night to travel since the plane is not full". She gave me my seat right away (they usually give out stand-by seats after boarding has started) and told me that the flight from LAX to MIA looked good too!!!! What? A couple hours ago the agent on the phone gave a completely different answer. I felt a big weight lifted from my schoulders. The flight from SAN to LAX was not even half full. The flight from LAX to MIA was fuller but there were still empty seats and I ended up in a row of 3 with just another lady. The flight was uneventful. I was tired but it was hard to sleep with my back bothering me and the tight space. We landed in MIA and after recuparating my checked bag I run to the Air France counter. I had not been able to list myself on the flight the day before and sometimes the agents can be very temperamental and uncooperative. Not the case today. The lady was very nice and even offered me a window exit which gives a few extra inches. She too gave me my seat right away. Another unsual fact. I proceeded in the concourse and waited for boarding. I had a whole row to myself. The plane was maybe 1/3 full on the first leg to Port au Prince, in Haiti. After a one hour stop over, the new passengers came on. A little fuller than before but not more than 1/2 for this leg to Pointe A Pitre. We landed in Guadeloupe right on time. My sister was waiting for me and of course the first stop was my mom's place. We then drove to my sister's where we stayed for a while before going to my brother's where we spent the evening. We had dinner together while listening to music and being goofy. We got back to my siter's around 10pm. It had been a looooong day for me.