We Made It Home!!!

Since we have a lot of folks checking in on us from out or town or that we haven't called yet. We are home! You won't believe who good it felt to sleep in our own bed last night. Especially after 28 hours of travel with an 8 month old. Everything started out just fine, we got to the airport and got checked onto our flight to Frankfurt no problem. The 7 hour flight went pretty well, there were several children on that flight and I think Megan was the best of the group. We were in the middle section of the plane with 4 seats across and we had all 4 seats. The flight attendants gave us a bed for her that we put across the 2 empty seats, Megan slept for 3 or 4 hours on that flight. We had only a short layover in Frankfurt which was nice. The 9 hour flight to Chicago was pretty much a nightmare, Megan didn't sleep for more than a half hour at a time, she typically slept 15 or 20 minutes after she screamed for about 10 minutes, it was a VERY LONG flight. Between Amy and I we must have walked about 10 miles around that plane. They have these tv screens in the seat rests and you can watch the plane's postition on a map of the world, it seemed like that plane NEVER moved across the map. Our flight path took us just south of Iceland and it seemed like we were over the North Atlantic just off the coast of Iceland for about 18 hours! We got to Chicago finally. We made it through immigration with no trouble, Megan is now offically a US citizen!!! Then another interesting thing happened. We had bought a bag of apples in Almaty and didn't eat any of them so we put them in our carry-on to snack on. Well we never ate them so I threw the bag of apples away on the plane. We had one that we had taken out of the bag we couldn't remember which carry-on we put it in and decided not to worry about it. Well we had to pick up our luggage and while we were waiting for the luggage I turned around and there is a dog sniffing at our carry-ons. Really bad thoughts went through my head, turns out it was a Department of Agriculture dog that found the bag with the apple in it. Amy had to search through the bag and get the apple, the officer then made a note on our customs form which required us to have our luggage X-rayed for about the hundredth time, they thought they saw something in one of the them and had to take it and search through it. We finally got through customs and realized when we got to security that we didn't have boarding passes for the flight to Buffalo. The lack of sleep was definitely starting to take it's toll. We had to turn around, get back on the train to another terminal and wait in line at the United counter. Then we had to get back on the train to the terminal our flight was leaving from and to the security check point. The line was now about a mile long. We finally got through the line and got the full search procedure which about put Amy over the top. By the time we got to the gate we again had very little extra time. Put it this way I don't think we'll be invited to Sunday dinner by anyone on our flight from Chicago to Buffalo. Megan screamed for about 15 minutes then fell asleep, then she pooped her diaper and woke up screaming again, Amy took her into the world's smallest airplane bathroom and changed her on the toilet seat cover. Then she screamed for another 20 minutes before going back to sleep. So on an hour and 15 minute flight she screamed for about half of it. We figure she got a grand total of maybe 6 or 7 hours of sleep in that 28 hour period. I got maybe 3 or 4 hours, Amy doesn't think she slept much at all, needless to say we were all pretty wiped out when we got home. We all slept pretty good last night, like I said, that bed felt really good. Now we'll see how the transition to Eastern Standard Time goes.

It was a very long trying day but we are so very happy to be home. Based on popular requests, we will attempt to continue updating this blog as time goes on.