Leaving on a jet plane (part 1)...

So I started this post about 9 days ago, but never quite finished it.  It's actually not the most pleasant thing to try to use your laptop on a plane when you're 6'2" and have pretty much zero leg room to begin with.  I finished the post after we actually arrived in the UAE.  This is a pretty long one, so be warned.  Without further ado...

Today's the day.  The one for which we've been waiting for MONTHS.  We are leaving Seattle and flying to Abu Dhabi via Chicago.  Today is going to be a long day.  And when I say long, please know that I mean LONG... four hour flight to Chicago, three hour layover, 14 (yes, I just said FOURTEEN) hour flight to Abu Dhabi, UAE.  I don't like to do anything for fourteen hours.  Not even sleep (unless I'm really tired) so today is going to be a challenge, not only for me, but for the girls.  I guess the good thing about all of this is that I won't be driving 14 hours, which is most definitely worse.  Add to those fourteen hours an 11 hour time difference, and we're just begging for chaos.  Anyway, you get the point.

So here's what it looks like in our hotel room right before we get ready to take the shuttle to the airport:

I realize this photo is small and of extremely poor quality, but it was taken by my phone camera in a poorly lit room at 7 in the morning.  Cut me some slack.

While I love my husband dearly, it was probably a good thing he wasn't in my physical presence while I was packing.  I probably would have punched him in the face if he had been at all near me. (All said with MUCH LOVE, honey!)  He kept telling me from halfway around the world that I needed to pack lightly, and that I didn't need to bring much with us.  How do you pack "lightly" when you're moving to the other side of the earth with your four kids?  In all, we managed to get all of our stuff in 7 120 liter bags and 5 backpacks.  I, myself, am pretty impressed with that feat. 

Fast forward to the first four-hour flight.  It was pretty uneventful.  The whole flying thing was fresh and new, nobody complained.  I was pretty happy about the Sprite served to my girls in those awesome little plastic airplane cups... no lids, of course... perched precariously on slippery tray tables ready to douse the nearest little lap with sticky goodness at any moment.  I actually asked the flight attendant if we could just have 1 whole bottle of water that we could share between the five of us.  She looked at me like I had 12 heads.  Apparently, the water bottle police don't allow a whole water bottle (with a LID) to be handed over on an aircraft.  Or maybe they do and I just asked someone who was having a bad day.  Either way, I'm so happy to announce that there were no spills of liquids on the flight to Chicago, and we arrived safely and on time.

I don't know if you've ever flown through O'Hare before, but the international terminal is a separate entity there.  Meaning, you have to take an elevated train to get to that terminal.  That was fun for the girls.  It accelerated at neck-snapping speeds, all while I am nagging the girls to hold on to the pole so they don't go flying to the back of the train car.  That very well could be the only time I remind my girls to hold onto a vertical pole.

We arrived at the international terminal and the girls are starving.  We have to check in with the airline flying us to Abu Dhabi before we can go through security, again.  Yep, you read that right, we got to go through security TWICE on this super awesome long day of travel.  I digress, though.  When we go to check in, they are weighing all of the carry-on luggage.  The girls are all okay, my backpack, however, is jammed with my laptop, an external hard drive, my camera and a couple of lenses, medical records that we're hand-carrying over, and miscellaneous other heavy things... none of which I wanted to place in my checked bags.  I'm proud to announce my carry-on bag weighed twice the legal limit.  Fortunately, I met an awesome supervisor named Mike who, after asking enough questions, concurred that none of the stuff in my bag should be checked, either.  He graciously allowed me to place a few of the things in my bag into my girls' bags, which were all underweight, and that brought my carry-on to only 10 kg instead of 14.  And he signed a special little tag saying I could bring it on the plane.  My personal, heartfelt thanks to Mike, again, even though I'm quite sure he'll never see this blog. 

Next step... security... again.  I will say that although the line was long, it went pretty smoothly.  Except Hannah had water in her brand new water bottle, I didn't take my external hard drive out of my bag (I didn't know I had to!) and my hands had to be swabbed, I'm guessing to check for residue of some sort?  I don't really know... I just kind of try to keep my mouth shut and do what they tell me to avoid any long delays.  I thought for sure the water bottle was going to have to be thrown away, because there was no way I was going to go empty it myself and go to the back of the security line.  This has happened to me before, and those were my options... throw it away or leave security, dump it out, and go back through the line.  Well, surprise of all surprises... the TSA agent dumped it out herself and ran it through the screener again, and let us take it.  Another big deal seeing as how that was the FIRST time that bottle had ever held water.  Thank you, TSA lady with common sense!

I mentioned before that my kids were starving, so after I get my shoes on, we decide to go eat.  Except there don't appear to be any restaurants after security.  Seriously, I about lost my mind.  Of course, there were the standard little stores/kiosks that had snacks and bags of chips and candy bars and stuff.  Not a single solitary restaurant.  There was, however, a sandwich stand right by our gate.  They also had cups of not 100% fresh (one or possibly two day-old) fruit and yogurt with fruit and granola.  Five little meals, five bottles of water, and $100 less in my wallet later, we were snacking on the floor by the window by our gate.  It was awesome.  I had to keep reminding Hannah to have a positive attitude because I was kind of reminding myself as well.  After we finished eating, we had just enough time to run to the bathroom in two different shifts so we don't have to take all of our crap with us.  Then it's time for the real fun to begin... it's time to board.  I'll continue that part of the story in part 2.  If you made it this far... thanks for reading!