Was this an emergency?

Dh & I are going to a family reunion in CA this summer, and have been planning for it since we got our finances back on track. When I lost my job a month or so ago, we decided we would use a back tax return to pay for the tickets. We waited. And waited. And waited. It still hasn't come, and the trip is scheduled at the end of June. Afraid of losing out on airfare specials, I started juggling money. I figured if it came down to it, I had enough money in my freedom accounts and savings account combined to cover it. But I sure didn't want to do that. So, first, I called up a mag who owes me for a past article and also for an upcoming one. That amount would cover more than half the airfare. I asked them to get back up to date and also advance me for the June article (the payment for which would be due June 15, but they are always late so I figured this once they could do me the favor of paying me a few weeks in advance). They were nice about it, but as always have stalled and stalled. Thursday night I was trolling for airfare specials as I've done every week or two since we started planning, and Southwest was running a fare lower than anything else I've seen. All three of us could go for $693 (coast-to-coast--we're in NC), including taxes and fees, etc. The fare was going to expire at midnight that night, and the next lowest fare I could find anywhere would have cost us an additional $600.

So I juggled. I moved money from savings to checking, just enough to cover. It left not enough money for groceries this week, but there's more money in savings and I keep hoping, hoping, hoping for those checks to arrive. I feel sick about tapping emergency savings for airfare for a non-emergency (though long-planned and rare opportunity--I haven't seen some of these family members in years, they live all over the U.S., and one set of my grandparents has never met my 2.5 year old son--when else would I be able to see all of them without taking several trips all over the country?). And the checks promised from the mag still haven't arrived, even though one of them is now almost two months past due. And I don't know when the tax check will arrive. We can survive, provided no *real* emergency crops up, like repairs or medical bills or what have you. But I hate draining my reserves!!

What do ya'll think? Was it an emergency? Should I have held out and hoped for a good fare after the funds were in place? I suppose I could have risked not getting to go at all, but then family would have chipped in and purchased our tickets for us, and I don't feel right letting them do that when we can scrape the money together ourselves. Did I do the right thing?

Heather