Hello again! We are here, we arrived late yesterday evening at our hotel. All of our baggage in tow, all limbs accounted for, brain cells? well lets just say.... we are here. :0)
The trip was a long and tiresome one. I will give you an account of what went down, minus the ass numbing bordness that we had to go through.
We got up at 3am to leave the house at 4am. We couldnt do curbside valet-luggage-deal because we were going international military style (of course couldnt be easy) so we waited in line behind a rather large russian family (who didnt speak a lick of english) for about 20 minutes. We got checked in, bags to baggage claim, oh and a potty break for carmen. We get in line (we were there for about 30 minutes) to get through security and about 10 minutes into that carmen had to pee again... imagine my joy at that announcement, and her need to grab her crotch the WHOLE time in line. Luckily, it was early in the morning and the people around us who overheard our conversation just laughed along and kept reminding me "when you gotta go, you gotta go"... if I wasnt so tired I might had hit them.. oh well, onto the next section of the story.
The flight to Atlanta was rather uneventful. When carmen stepped onto the plane she said "Mommy, Im on a PLANE!!!!" it was rather cute. They flew pretty good, Rose slept a bit of the way. Neither kid ate much of the breakfast, I dont blame them. It was this odd combination of crousant, cheese, apple bites, turkey bacon and apple butter.. now normally that would be a yummy combination, but nothing was rather fresh... actually it all had a "chewy" way about it.
So we jump to lunch at the airport. Carmen didnt want to get off the plane, but after hearing we were getting on another even bigger one she was ok with taking a break. We had lunch at an overly small TGIFridays that smelled like tired passengers and BO...lucky us. Carmen had to pee three times during lunch and then again as we wondered the terminal waiting for our boarding zone to be called. Jim was embarassed by the "leash" that rose wore. It was a dog-shaped backpack with a leash hanging off its butt. It worked great and just like Carmen, Rose usually was holding my hand, so the leash was just a nice insurance plan, but not really needed. Men.. if I wasnt so tired, I might have hit him....
The plane to Frankfurt was larger, it seperated us into Jim and Carmen, Rose and Me. Carmen was overjoyed to be on another plane and she told everyone about it, like she was some traveling pro. it was cute, but again.. I was tired. We drugged the girls as we were walking onto the plane but unfortunately it took them 45 minutes to pull away, then another 30 to get us in the air, so both girls were out long before we took off. They ended up sleeping about 45 minutes of the beginning of the flight. Thats all.... now I might need to say this as a reminder, the flight was 9 hours long!! Not the kind of flight you want young children awake and bored on! Oh well, thats how things go. Rose fell asleep in my arms and almost got bonked on the head with the cart, the flight attendant told me that i should switch her around so her feet hang out in the aisle. I reminded her that I could barely get her upper body on my lap and her feet would get smashed if I left them in the aisle. (If I wasnt so tired, I might have hit her!) Beyond the normal fussiness and bordeom that comes with long plane rides the girls did surprisingly well. We even got compliments from some older women who sat behind Jim and I. They said that we had well behaved children and that we were great parents... We looked at each other and wondered at the same time if they werent too tired to realize who they were talking to. Sweet and unexpected... but still supisious. :0)
We gathered our luggage and headed to the check in area. The lady there said that they would take us to a bus that would drive us to the Sheradon hotel where Jim would in process then we would be taken to our respective forts and then to our hotels. Well to be specific, she was correct, but her original esitmation of 5 minutes for inprocessing was a tad off. We ended up being stuck in a small conference room for 6 hours! They didnt staff more people to help with the larger than normal load of incoming soldiers (and their families) plus they hadnt even finished with the people from the day before and there was people that stayed the night in the hotel!!! I was shocked, but not really surprised, this is the Army after all. Anyways, we sat, and sat... and sat. Oh and they stocked us well, about 100 family members with two WHOLE gallons of water... such the first class treatment!
Well, to make a long story short, we finished, rushed to the next bus (which was hard considering Carmen was in meltdown mode, Jim and I each had to push an overloaded trolly with baggage and Rose was still asleep in her stroller) We get downstairs, finally, ready for the bus to Ansbach and learn its going to be a 5 hour drive... if I wasnt so tired I really was going to hit that guy!!!! We get loaded and off we go.
Germany looks surprisingly like the NW. I kept forgetting that we were in another country, not just in a farming community in middle washington. it was weird to say the least. We were so groggy that minutes after the bus started the girls were alseep, Jim was snoring and I was staring outside thinking "Oh how cute, theres a car with an europian liscense plate.. oh theres another... oh wait... they all have that... oh yeah, I forgot we are IN europe." Yeah... no sleep was getting to me. And to our patience, at this point we were getting on each others nerves. Luckily the long bus ride, with nice reclining chairs, gave us a nice time to nap. THe girls slept the whole time and had to be wakened to get off.
So we were in better moods to greet the poor soldiers charged with getting the newbies to their places. The gentlemen helped get some bags on the sidewalk ready for the girls and I to chill out on, because there wasnt anywhere for us to go. They took pity on me and kept me talking for the next 45 minutes while we waited for them to do yet more "inprocessing". The soldier assigned to us loaded our bags, bought us burgerking, and drove us to the Inn. The room we got, well technically its two rooms, is rather nice. I was surprised at how simple things are, its not like they dont have what we will need, but German design itself is simplistic. I rather like it. The rooms do have a small stove, microwave and refrigerator. THey are connected by the kitchen. The girls are in a room with two twins, our is one queen bed. We unloaded, it only took two hours to get out what we would need for the night, bathed the girls... oh did I mention that they dont have bathtubs, only showers.. yeah it was a ton of fun for a baby who HATES water in her face.. poor thing. We put them to bed around 10pm and zonked out shortly after that. Jim woke me up this morning to tell me that he was going to meet his sponsor this morning and that he had made me coffee (how sweet is that?) Its now 10am and the girls are still out. I am going to go wake them up in a minute, as much as I am enjoying the quite, Carmen needs her meds and the girls really need to get on the new time schedule out here. Which if you didnt know already is 9 hours ahead of NW time.
A storm rolled in about an hour ago and I was reminded how blessed my family is. We made it across the world with only each other. We didnt fight (not much more than usual), didnt hit anyone.. heehee, tempted as I was at times... Our luggage made it, we only lost sippy cups on the plane, and the sun is just coming out. Carmen hasnt yet had a siezure, but we are still holding our breath, she is most likely to have one today after she is more relaxed than anytime. But hopefully for the kids it wasnt too stressful, we tried hard to make it fun and exciting, not scary and stressful.
I have a couple pictures from the plane ride, I was too groggy and could only think "I should take pictures as we drive past this beautiful German countryside" on the bus.. sorry. But I am sure I will make up for it in the future.
The town we are in is very cute, its green everywhere!! The houses are all brick slated roofs, and pastel yellow, pink, and blushed on the outside. So as time goes on, we will take tons of pictures and leave equal enough updates so check back often. You never know when I will write. :0)
We love and miss you all. Please stay in contact. I havent figured out how to call yet, but we do have internet in the room, so emails will be sent. We cant use skype in the hotel though, too bad. But its only my first day here, I am sure with time, we will be communicating just as if I was only a state away!
Toodles everyone!
The Fam
