Stairs of Doom

2 summers ago I decided to fly myself and my 2 kids to Houston to see my dad. The flight had a 2 hour layover in Detroit. Not fun! So I decided to get the oh so lovely kid leashes. I don't like them, but thought what the hey, 2 kids, busy airport, I'll suck it up.
We left from Midway in Chicago. My friend was kind enough to stuff all of us and all of our crap into her car and drive the 3 hours to the airport.
We get into the airport, check our luggage outside at the handy dandy luggage check. We enter the airport, with the carseat, 5 carryons and of course the kid leashes wrapped around my wrist. My son decides he wants to ride the escalator. Usually this is not a problem. He steps on, starts going down, my 3 year old freaks out and refuses to get on, I can't pick her up because of our ridiculous amount of crap I was carrying, my boy is still going down, down, down...until that is he reaches the end of his leash and falls backwards. I can't get it off my wrist cause it is pulling and I have too much crap. His pants get pulled down and he is laying practically naked on the stairs. Finally after a huge crowd gathers, mostly i think upset cause they need to use the escalator my son is so rudely hogging, I throw all of our stuff down the escalator including the end of the leash. While trying to convince my daughter that she really does want to go down the stairs of doom some kind stranger jumps in front of my and carries my boy to the awaiting airport security. We held some of the confiscated water bottles on his scrapes until the police officer comes by on his segway so that we can file a report. Not the way I wanted to start the vacation but we made it.
We get to Detroit. Karate Kid refuses to even look at an escalator and I keep yelling at them to hold my hand, since shortly after 'the incident' I threw the leashes in the trash. I am holding hands, carryons, a stroller and a carseat for about an hour when I beg the lady at the gate to let me set it down for a few minutes. She refused, thankfully another gate attendant took mercy on my and I stashed the carseat behind the desk for a awhile. When it is time to board the plane I get told, "I don't think we have room for that carseat" I said, "HUH?" The flight attendant then said, "well we don't have an extra seat" I replied " she can't sit in it?" She said " does she have her own ticket?" I said " umm yeah...she's 3." She says "oh, ok then your fine" I walk down the aisle, banging just about everyone in the head or arm or leg on the way down and finally we get seated and make our way to Houston.
When we got there however Karate Kid wanted to swim in the Gulf, I told him that would hurt like hell since he was scraped literally neck to knee caps. He agreed and was happy to play in the sand and look for sea shells. :)
The return trip home was not quite as eventful but not without its problems. When checking in the night before our flight I noticed that they have my and my 2 children seperated by about 3 rows, and the 2 of them are seperated by the same. Not cool! So I said something and the best they could do was put us in first class seperated by just 1 row for the first half of the flight. Some kind strangers let us all sit together and we all had a nice comfy ride to Minnesota, from there to Midway we were seperated by an aisle in coach but we made it. We came out of it alive. However I will NEVER fly alone with my kids again, especially since there are 3 now. I would much rather drive. And I decided to check everything except for 1 bag on the way home, Much easier!

Oh By the way. I am pretty sure there is now a label on kid leashes that say " DO NOT USE ON ESCALATORS" and it is all because of me, I was that idiot. ;)

How about you? any crazy vacation stories?