A Not-So-Brief Travel Recap, part 1

The first part (because the whole thing was getting very long indeed)

Well, our travel plans didn’t go especially smoothly in the beginning, but there were lots of good things along the way too, and it was clear that we were blessed in lots of little ways.

As you may know, we took Addra to the ER in West Virginia (where we were staying with my sister) early on Sunday, the 26th. She was mildly dehydrated from a 2.5-day bout of a wretched stomach bug. She was also quite lethargic, semi-incoherent, and making me, her mother, really worried. After an anti-nausea med prescription and an IV drip, she was perkier than she’d been for two days. We’d planned to leave already for Maryland again to stay at our hotel, but we left a day-ish late but with her in slightly better shape. (Sadly, this meant we missed our branch’s farewell potluck, and we were sad not to get to say goodbye to lots of people, but... nothing else we could do.)

Monday was crazy with last-minute stuff to do. So much stuff, including saying goodbye to a couple of our friends, the Meyers and the Muellers, who have been with us through soooo much. The Muellers were the first family to invite us for dinner when we moved to Maryland, and they’ve been good friends ever since. Elissa Meyer and I (along with another friend, Meghan) single-handedly created and sustained our beautiful book club, from which all of my best Maryland friends have come. And she is the person who gave me the courage to really jump into homeschooling.

And even though we got to see friends (and give some air hugs), still Addra was a pretty floppy Addra some of the time, but she was now at least keeping food in her system, so things were getting better.

Monday night Brice had to do ALL THE THINGS: Get our last few suitcases and boxes from our house so it was totally empty. Clean out the car like mad so that he could drop it off to the car transportation folks Tuesday morning. Drive down our 3/4-full gas tank to 1/4 tank for the car transportation folks. Etc. He was up until about 3 or 4 am, and then he had to wake up again around 6:30 to get the car to its appointment.

Oh, and somewhere along the way here (Sunday night I think?), Koa threw up. Just once, and then he was perky. Until Monday night, just once again.

On Tuesday I discovered that I needed to fill out customs forms for all eight of the packages I was mailing to us. Packages that I’d pretty much dumped a bunch of random stuff into. Plus, those forms take forever to fill out. Happily, my amazing friend Elissa was willing to help me out (seriously, so many good friend points to Elissa for this!).

As a side note to this story: I was apparently so rushed and stressed out about this part of the day that I messed up the zip code on five of the eight packages. They went to Guam. Sigh. But they are slowly being re-routed to us, so hooray for those customs forms in the end, since they’re the only thing on the packages that indicated we were in Alice Springs, not Guam!

Finally we packed up our suitcases (twelve! plus two car seats, a booster, three carry-ons, and backpacks for everyone) and took the hotel shuttle to the airport around 3:30 pm for our flight at 6:40. We used an airport curbside helper dude to get all our suitcases inside, and that man was slick! Sooo fast, so on top of everything. He helped us tag all our luggage, check it, everything. It was amazing. I wanted to hug him. I hope we tipped him enough.

We eventually boarded our plane and then sat there for a while. They told us there was a maintenance issue they were trying to figure out. Long story short: The flight got canceled. Brice waited in line for a veeeerrrry long time to rebook for the next morning (the rest of us just sat and played, etc, while we waited for about five hours). Here’s where several really lovely blessings come in:

- We were able to book the flight out of BWI again, instead of Dulles (which would have been a long drive, early in the morning, after already being sleep deprived).

- Because we wanted to check out of our hotel late, we had just booked an extra night there. So when the airline ran out of rooms they could easily give to people for the night, we were still fine because we had a place still reserved to us!

- We chose a hotel that had an airport shuttle. Originally we were just going to get a ride on Tuesday afternoon from our friend April, who has a HUGE van (and who also, I should mention, did a great job of cleaning our house for us). But then we figured we’d use a shuttle instead. This was a huge blessing because when we needed to leave the airport at 1 am with our 12+ suitcases, we just called the shuttle back over. No worries about waking people or panicking over finding a taxi or anything. And then same thing at 6:30 the next morning. Soooo nice.

- There was a couple in line next to Brice who were very friendly with the kids and played with them and entertained them from time to time. We were all essentially the last folks in line, so it didn’t matter if we were all over the place. It was lovely.

- My sisters Dawn and K-onna had packed all the kids little bags of activities and stuff for the plane. We used them a lot while we were waiting in the airport. It averted many crises.

So while it was all very ugh, there were also so many blessings to offset it all. Anyway, we went back to the hotel, where Koa once again threw up once and then slept. The other kids slept like rocks. Brice and I slept like rocks. There were a lot of rocks until far-too-early in the morning, when we headed back to the airport and finally had our mostly painless flight to San Francisco.

Here’s another great blessing: Brice’s brother Trace and his family live in the San Francisco area. So instead of being stuck at the SFO airport for ten hours until our late-night flight, we got to play with them for part of the time, going out to a park and the ever-exciting Taco Bell! It was lovely to get one last chance to see them before we headed off to the other side of the world.

And you’ll get part 2... eventually!

P.S. There are more pics, but they’re on Brice’s phone.

Sick Addra

Elissa is the best!

Snuggling and listening to/watching a show with headband earphones.
While we wait for the official flight cancellation.

He did this lacing card all by himself! :)

Windy, cold, fun times with Brice's brother and family.