Anyway, Day One - Thursday, October 10th:
Actually backing up a little, we got our Consulate Appointment confirmation on Monday morning, October 7th and immediately contacted our travel agent who specializes in adoption travel. It seriously seemed to take hours to get our tickets officially booked. I think it was mid afternoon by the time we booked everything. We planned on coming home Thursday, October 25th, but the travel agent couldn't find us two seats together! There was NO way I was going to risk not sitting together - I know everyone has said that people would have moved... but I just couldn't risk it. We'd have been asking people to move out of the best seats in economy for us since we were trying to book bassinet seats. Prior to this, we'd never heard of bassinet seats. But for those like us who don't know, they are the sweetest seats in economy! More on that at the end of the trip though. Anyway, we asked the TA to look for seats on Wednesday and sure enough he found two seats together. We'd have to fly out of Hong Kong though, but it ended up being kind of a wash since the cost to go to Hong Kong wasn't only a little more than the cost of having to stay in China for an extra day.
Phil took the day off of work on Wednesday which was SO necessary! Let me think - so much has happened since then, it's hard to even remember what all we did! I had packed the kids clothes already into bins and sent them home with my sister, Annalisa, who was going to be taking the kids to her house for the duration of our trip. But we still had to pack a school bin, a gift bin (I had little favor bags of gifts for the kids to open each day while we were gone), a sleeping stuff bin, a random stuff bin (vitamins, potty seat, etc.), a toy bin, and Lily's birthday presents (since her 7th birthday was while we were gone).
Oh I just remembered what we did on Wednesday! HA! I took Phil down to an endodontist for a root canal! His mouth was hurting so much. But it ended up being an inflamed muscle because he was grinding his teeth so hard at night (stress? :-P ) so that was GREAT! We had to stop at the bank. I had already put a stop on our mail earlier. We came home and packed while Phil's mom ran errands with the girls for us - picking up a mouth guard (more on that later), snacks, ear plugs, and a few other things on our list for the trip.
I took Lily up to AWANA and then ran over to my mom's house to wash and style her hair and dye my hair before picking Lily back up and coming home to put kids to bed. After we got kids in bed, we worked more on packing. I put all my clothes in 2 gallon zip locks, which worked out great since we had to rearrange things several times to get the weight correct for the baggage check. We ended up having to leave most of the snacks behind because we didn't have any more weight allowance. But it worked out fine because we had plenty of good food the whole time we were in China.
While we were packing, we had a phone conference with Karla - from our adoption agency. She asked how we were doing and asked us some good questions to help us prepare for meeting Sammy and those first few days. It was SO great to talk to her. We both felt more excited after we got off the phone with her. She is so sweet.
Thursday morning, we went to the chiropractor and wrapped up as many lose ends as we could, packed up the van and headed down to my sister's house just after lunch. We dropped off all their bins and Sammy's carseat and a carseat for Tessa (my sister Valerie and her daughter Tessa were flying in the next day to also help with the kids while we were gone). Annalisa then drove us all down to O'Hare for our flight. Good thing she was with us, otherwise we might have wandered the airport for a while longer than we did... Phil and I were SO out of it!
We checked in for our flight and the woman at the counter asked where our baby was (our tickets had to say we were flying with an infant). We explained that we were adopting and that he wasn't going to be on this flight. She was so excited that she basically stopped processing our tickets and started telling people we were adopting from China. Phil took out his phone and we showed her Sammy's picture. HA! She took his phone up and down the counter showing the other attendants and then even showed some other passengers. It was pretty funny. I don't think she even looked at how much our bags weighed (but they were both under the limit).
Then we gave the kids their big sisters and big brother gifts. Lily got a doll-sized Chinese dress for her American Girl and little glasses (that she'd been wanting for so long) that were just the size for her doll. Phoebe got a little Chinese baby doll (who she says is a boy and is named Sammy, even though he's wearing pink - more on that later, too). Titus got a Professor Harold Hill case with the musical instrument pieces in it. You may remember these from the 80's. They were called Crazy Combo Horns from 1984. I had prayed about what to get him for his big brother gift. He is SO into The Music Man and Professor Hill. Anything turns into a baton and he marches around singing 76 Trombones. So, other than the fact this gift was going to drive my sisters insane, it was the PERFECT gift for him. :)
We loved giving them their gifts. We gave them a million hugs and kisses and then watched them walk away. That was pretty hard. But then we turned and went through security knowing we were finally going to get our son!
For months, I had envisioned the moment we got on the plane and buckled our seat belts. I had dreamed about the relief and anticipation I'd feel. I was looking forward to a good cleansing cry as I felt the moment settle in as I buckled my seat belt....
Uh, not so much. We got onto a huge plane and squeezed ourselves into the tiniest airplane seats known to man in the center of the airplane. I was in the center of a row of 5 seats. Eeekk... My mom had told me to get up every two ours to stretch my legs and get a cup of water. I could hardly get into my seat with nobody else in the row. There was no way I was getting out with people squished in next to me. Phil put up our carry-ons but then we realized we'd better get whatever we wanted right away, because we knew it was going to be difficult to get anything once we got settled. It was the only humor of the trip as our bag basically exploded and his mouth guard (the new one - never used fortunately) shot into the lap of the lady in the row behind us. She was so shocked and disgusted (because unfortunately she didn't know it had never been used)! And the headphone jack fell into the man's lap next to Phil. It was like the comedy of errors. We hurried to get settled and realized how sardined we were in a matter of seconds.
As we took off, I felt nothing except a tiny bit of panic that we were going to be in this plane for the next 13 hours! And then to top it off, instead of the warm fuzzy feeling, I puked in the air sick bag after the flight attendants passed out drinks and pretzels. When the flight attendant came back for trash I asked for ginger ale and a new bag. She asked, "are you sick?" and then rushed to go get two huge shopping bags. LOL. Not that sick, I hope! Anyway, the ginger ale seemed to help right away.
My screen for my in flight viewing convenience was kind of broken and Phil's headphone jack didn't work. The movie selections were so dumb and both of us could hardly find a comfortable spot to sleep. The food was AWFUL - like really awful. And the turbulence was so bad that we had to hold everything on our trays to keep them from flying off. The man next to Phil slept the ENTIRE trip so Phil didn't get up and I got up once by climbing over the woman next to me when the man next to her was out of his seat. So much for stretching our legs every 2 hours!
But in the end, we arrived. We can look back and laugh about how horrible the flight was and we are SO glad that we got that over and done with because the rest of the flights (6 more after that) were much much much better!
Phil is the MASTER packer. He can pack suitcases, vans, moving trucks - anything! It's kind of funny because in packing for a trip, we have gifts and abilities that we do not possess in normal every day life. Phil is not at all spacial, except when it comes to packing. I am not at all organized except when it comes to preparing for a trip. So when we pack, I know what we need and can round it up in meaningful ways but cannot for the life of me put it in the suitcase. So we make a good team. :)
Standing under the China flag
The air was so dry on the plane that I wore my scarf over my mouth and nose to try and get my nose and throat to not hurt so much. My sister gave me this scarf and it was a lifesaver on many occasions! Always fly with a scarf!
Bye Milwaukee!
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