It's 1:03 am on Sunday morning, 3/15/09. Since we were flying westward, we flew in sunshine almost the entire trip, except for the last 3 hours from Japan to Beijing, China. I tried doing the math to figure out exactly how many hours we were traveling but my brain can't do that right now. I know it was over 24 hours from door to door. It took us less than 15 minutes to completely trash the hotel suite with our 6 suitcases and 6 backpacks. So much for traveling light!
Pete and the 2 younger girls are in bed. Kaeterina and I can't fall asleep so she's watching gymnastics and I'm going to blog until Pete's laptop runs out of battery. Pete, Kaeterina and I each got around 2 hours of sleep total. K2 & K3 got at least 5 hours, possible a bit more.
I fully intended on posting an update during what I thought was going to be a long 2 hour lay-over but it turned out to almost not be long enough. By the time we got off the plane, through customs, and over to our gate, we only had 20 minutes until boarding began, just enough time for a potty break while on land.
Both flights were uneventful with good weather and very minimal turbulence. That was a blessing!
Flying with the girls went MUCH better than I anticipated. I had a few surprised packed for each of them to keep them occupied. So between a little reading, a little game playing, some eating, and napping, they were occupied almost the entire time. Lots of waiting between every check-point you have to go through each time, but not long enough for them to whine too much.
We thought K2 was over her stomach bug but about 8 hours into our 14.5 hour flight to Japan and she caught us off guard with vomiting. She was begging to eat so I let her have pretzels. That was a bad idea. Vomit all over her clothes, shoes, and blanket. Luckily I brought a carry-on with one full change of clothing for each of us in case our luggage was lost so we were able to clean her up and change her on the plane.
God was surely with us the entire time. We never had any difficulties at any check-points through the entire trip. Only one of our checked suitcase was inspected by TSA (at least only 1 had a tag in it stating that) That one had Pete's pocket knife in it so I'm not surprised at all that it was inspected. Being that both Pete and Kaeterina are on gluten free diets, the girls aren't well, and I am a picky eater beyond anything reasonable, I packed a 18 can coolers of snack foods. I also had a separate bag with 2 pedialytes for Kierstyn and a 6 pack of pediasure for Kaeterina. I knew these were off limits but on NWA's website, it does say baby and children's formula is allowed so I thought I'd give it a try. Pete said I was nuts for even trying and that all that money was going to get wasted when it was tossed because it didn't meet requirements. Well, we got through both check-points without one single thing thrown away. I just told them I had sick kids that needed this food and that could they please just hand inspect it and let us bring it through. No problems. We were able to have it all. They were very understanding and considerate. I just know that was God reminding me that He had everything handled.
I should try to get some sleep. I told Pete that I think I'm too excited and just can't sleep. It'll probably happen tomorrow afternoon after we get back to the hotel with Kaiden and he's too upset to do much else but cry.
I took some pictures already but Pete's asleep so I can't ask him how to put them on his laptop to post them. They'll have to come tomorrow.
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