The Flight

This was an adventure in it's self. :) When we arrived at the airport with Mom and Aunt Laura/Uncle Gary we had the airport to ourselves, it seemed. I went to get the luggage all checked in with ryan and the boys locked the doors from the inside. This wasn't a big deal, as my mom was in the car with them. When we came out, however, they pulled the handle from the inside, setting off the alarm. We couldn't get it to turn off. It was awful and lasted for 10 mintues and gave me ridiculous anxiety. Anyway, we finally figured it out and met inside with Amanda and her boyfriend and Liz, a family friend, for goodbyes. We headed to our gate and enjoyed playing games and reading books. IT was a great night. The boys were amazed at the 747 and 777 that were just outside the window from them. We were all extremely excited for the first flight. We boarded and it was a glorious experience had by all... except for the man that was sleeping in between ryan and I. ;) The boys were squealing with excitement and saying things like, "mom, can you even believe this?!" It was exactly as I hoped for. On the decent Logan and Caleb's ears were really hurting. That was the only hard part of the flight. Then we got to LAX. How things can change in a flash. :) The boys fell asleep about 20 minutes before boarding. It was 11 pm our time and they had been up and ready to leave for the airport that morning when the sun came up. :) It. had. been. a. long. day. Ryan went to try and arrange boarding. He asked if we could board the kids and come back for our belongings. They said no. They offered no help. They told us we would need to wake them and have them walk on by themselves. Ha! We had a carryon for each of us and 4 sleeping big-boys. It was a task, but we drug them on heaving and sweating and struggling all the way. Meanwhile, everyone in California was lined up watching and not helping. :) I may be prone to hyperbole but ONLY because it really felt this way. :) They ran the plan on Aussie time, so dinner was served 2 hours after boarding (our 1 am). All the boys were sleeping and didn't eat. The next meal was 12 hours later. Awesome. the boys woke about our 6 am, when everyone else had just been sleeping about an hour. Parker slept on my lap the whole night and I had zero circulation in my legs. this is way too much detail and nothing important, but it was not enjoyable. The remainder of the flight everyone slept.... except us. I didn't feel like I could turn on the lights to let the kids do their own things, for fear of disrupting everyone. SO, I resorted to movies. We were so excited for the sun to come up so that we could see the clouds and ocean and have that as a distraction... and then they asked us to keep the shades down so everyone could sleep. DIE. The older two did great the whole flight, but caleb and Parker struggled. By the last three hours I was ready to rip my hair out and got out the aprons our friends back home made the kids. They were full of new toys, snacks and great activities. It made the last hours bearable... To speed things up, we got to customs and the kids were everywhere. Once we found all of our luggage they just pushed us out the door, bypassing inspection and sniffer dogs. That was the only highlight of the flight. Sounds really downerish, because it was, but it has gotten a lot better. :)