elation, frustration

We got our first-choice consulate appointment--June 27 it is!  (I can't remember if that was our first choice the last time I posted about it or not--we went back and forth a few times.)  We will be meeting our son on June 13, staying in Jinan long enough to see friends and celebrate his birthday on the 20th, and then flying to Guangzhou on the 21st to do the medical and visa portion of our trip.  I started looking at plane tickets while Esther was napping this afternoon, and lo and behold our ideal dates (June 9 - June 29) were also the least expensive.  I found two flights, on different airlines and leaving out of different cities, that were good--not "gotta grab 'em up like hotcakes" good, but quite acceptable--and since the prices were very similar and they each had unique advantages and disadvantages, it was hard to decide which one we wanted.  So I played around a little bit figuring out what aircraft we would be on and whether or not it would have cool features like personal video screens on the back of the seats in front of us...and JUST as I was about to buy the flight we had decided on, it went up.  By about $400.  Per person.  So I went to check on the other airline that had flights we liked, and--same thing.  Meanwhile our internet slowed down to a crawl, which made double-checking all possible travel sites an agonizing process.  Several hours later, after lots of stress, way too much time on the internet, time out for a few necessary domestic tasks (like eating cereal for dinner), and finally remembering to stop obsessing over travel sites long enough to pray, we have reservations with our original first-choice airline for a slightly less ideal schedule and a few hundred more dollars than we would have paid early this afternoon--but a good $600 less than we were looking at earlier this evening.  I plan to keep checking back with the airline in case anybody else decides not to purchase their reserved tickets!  But, at least we have a ceiling on what we can spend, and it's better than it could be.  Now I'm ready to calm down and go to bed.  :-)