Traveling with young children always gives routine experiences a new angle. Take baggage claim.

As I waited on the sidelines with my boys, watching Jeff wait for the suitcases, Kenny asked me the 5 W's and H of luggage retrieval. His concern centered around unclaimed items. I recalled the locked Plexiglas display cabinets at Newark Liberty Airport and explained in hopeful terms that everything is reunited eventually.

"And what if our suitcases don't come out?" His question became more relevant as more and more time elapsed and as the baggage claim area of the small Tampa airport cleared out.

Soon the carousel stopped turning and the lights went off. Only a few pieces of luggage lay on the belt. Neither of our suitcases had materialized. I teased the children, "Now, on the plane, I had told you to watch and make sure that they load our luggage. SomeBODY wasn't doing their job." They didn't understand my ironic and fake chide so they didn't take it personally. 'Though trying to make light of our missing luggage, of course, I was concerned. A little. Real, genuine concern was Jeff's job. And he takes his jobs seriously.

I took the children to see a large fish tank while he registered our address with the airport personnel. They thought that the luggage may come down on the 4pm flight. But, frankly, they didn't know where our bags were. Isn't that odd in this day of package tracking and delivery confirmation? The information must be somewhere but the system may be either too slow or too restricted for anyone in the field to reference.

All in all, we had enough to carry without the extra, heavy suitcases! If possible, it was a blessing (almost!) to have the airport deliver them to us at our destination. Not everyone was as lucky. Jeff observed a woman with Carnival Cruise Line tickets in hand at the baggage claim counter looking for her delayed luggage. How would her bags catch up with her at sea?!

The promise was 8pm. Fine, at least they located the suitcases. Then the promise was 2:30am. Alright, the kids can sleep in their sweatpants for one night. Fine. And, I had a day's worth of clothes on hand for them anyway, just in case. Then, the promise was 10am. And they kept that promise. The suitcases were delivered 20 hours after our flight arrived. It didn't impact our plans at all. We went to Manatee Springs State Park that afternoon and swam in the spring and had a great little vacation. More on that later.