Travel.

I love to travel.  I love to plan it.  I love new places.  I love a change of pace.  And of course, I love getting a break from the daily.  I do not love the actual processing of getting to our new destination. 

I have been planning our trip to the states for more than 6 months.  I have been dreading the flights for the same amount of time!!!  I stress about being late, checking in, connections.  I get irritated with the questions, excess energy and all the whining and complaining that traveling with kiddos so often includes.

This morning Emme woke-up at 3 with an earache.  She never gets earaches, so to add to my already high stress level, now I had the joy of looking forward to dragging a sick kid across 9 time zones!!!  So with a total of 3 hours of sleep and no coffee, we drag the kids, 7 suitcases (all crammed into 3!), 5 carry-ons and a bag full of snacks to the airport.  We arrived, checked-in, sailed through passport control and managed just enough time for a potty break and snack before boarding. 

Our first flight was uneventful and even arrived early!  In Amsterdam, we were greeted by Starbucks!!! Even though we had a little more than an hour, we opted not to spend it with the more than 25 other excited passengers awaiting caffine, so we had “brunch” at McDonalds.  For some strange reason, Emme’s passport had been flagged, but this minor irritation, resulted in us getting an express pass through the long line through security.  When we boarded we were shocked to discover that we had the first row of seats behind First Class!!!  There was sooo much room, Emme was able to make a pallet on the floor and I got to spread out in two seats!!!  We had our own individual monitors with more movies, shows, games and music that the 10 hour flight would give us time to explore.  So while Emme slept the majority of the flight, Gid was wide awake watching movies and playing games.  Every hour, we were offered drinks snacks and 2 not completely disgusting meals.  This was by far one of the best flights we have ever taken…KLM did an outstanding job.

Emme seemed to feel fine through out the entire 18 hour journey, until we were buckled up about to land in Texas.  5 seconds after announcing she felt like she was going to be sick, she threw-up, but thankfully Keith was able to toss me his bag in 4!!!  I guess the thought of Texas truly does make some people sick!!!  :-)

At one point in the flight, my camera fell out of my seat.  I did not think much about it, because it has a cover that provides a little bit of protection and it is soo not the first time.  However, the autofocus was damaged in the fall!!!  Everything works fine if I manually focus, but obviously my manual focusing skills need much work, since out of 100 pics and only these 12 (4 of which were taken before the fall) were salvageable!!!

On our drive to McKinney, we missed our Exit and in our attempt at figuring out an alternative route…we look up and discover we are right behind Keith’s parents, who were traveling from New Mexico to pick-up the kids!!!  It was amazing!!!  We followed them right into McKinney!!!

Our evening was perfect!!!  We stayed with Grandma at her fabulous new home.  The kids got reacquainted with their cousins, swam, had a fabulous Mexican feast, saw a water light show and crashed hard after such a long, completely fabulous day!!!