Best flight ever

So back in October Lindsay came home one day and told me that he had a trip coming up. No big deal this is a normal occurrence. I was a bit surprised he was telling me so early because normally he wouldn't know that far out (3 weeks), well ok sometimes he does but it always seems like I find out last minute. I like to prepare mentally for all these things so I was glad to have the insight early. He recieved a few phonecalls from people about the trip  through the week when he was home from work for the day that I thought was a bit odd, but still didn't think anything of. Then about a week later I got a sweet message from my sister-in-law that spilled the beans (to her credit......she did NOT realize it was a surprise for me). And Lindsay could have easily covered up the slip up but decided to explain. He was setting up a trip for our family to fly back to the states for 10 days! And not only the states but the plane was supposed to be landing in Washington...all we would have to do is drive from Seattle to Spokane and we were home free (and pretty much literally).

That is where the true adventure began

This story in entirity will be done over a few because it was a long fun jam packed trip with lots of twists and turns...er..adventure!

Just in prep for the trip which we wanted to keep as a surprise for our families (other than Lindsay's brother and his family who knew) we ended up telling everyone due to trying to gather everyone together and some people were on trips that we wanted to give the opportunity to come home to see us, etc. Anyhow... we finally packed our stuff, had our shopping lists of what we wanted to bring back from the states, lists of the things Lindsay's co-workers had already been sending to his parent's house for us to pick up afterall there are perks to flying on a military flight. Such as the weight limit for you baggage is more lenient than commercial and for this particular flight we could pretty much bring back whatever we wanted on the plane. Our only holdback was fitting us and the stuff back in the car to get it to the plane. But we were excited.

We woke up super early one fine saturday morning in Australia and drove to the base. Everything was in order and good, we even took off on time. We were stoked that we would be free to roam the plane to play and had heard they would bring cots out to sleep on partway to the flight. The plan was to stop in Hawaii and stay a night and then continue on to Seattle. Fair enough.

 We took off, and about an hour later we heard over the intercom that we had a "bird strike" and needed to turn around land, have the jet checked out and then re-evaluate take off. We were fortunate at this point that the bird that we obliterated hit the side of the plane. and not an engine. The base took care of all they needed to for the bird strike and we were allowed to re-take off without too long of a delay.

 I was still a bit nervous about all the flying with a two year old...did I have enough toys...kid friendly snacks....entertainment....battery life on our electronics...etc,etc.

 The flight was the best I have ever been on. Turns out they did set upthe medic cots for us and we all took turns sleeping. Erik slept a good amount in his car seat and then I moved him to an open cot to extend his rest out some more. The food was better than any plane fare I have had, we could stretch way more, lay out, and Erik is obsessed with planes anyway and so he was in heaven. He played, slept, and played some more....such an awesome traveler-totally made up for some of his crazy days at home :) My whole plan for the trip since it wasn't going to be a real long trip was to just let our bodies adjust how they wanted...no fighting jet lag or too much adjustment....I just wanted to enjoy family and feel rested with all the days of travel I knew we would have (little did I know how many travel days)

And finally we ended in Hawaii, landing just after midnight. That was hard just because nothing was open and we weren't renting a car to drive anywhere where things would be open. We got a taxi to finally come and get us-he took forever....took an hour and half to get to our hotel room.......should have taken 20 minutes-maybe.....drove to the room which was a 5 minute drive (luckily the cab driver was a very nice man, just slow and confused) only to have our keys not work. Lindsay saw another passenger we flew with in his room and ran out real quick to use his room phone to call the front desk. So then we waited another half an hour for someone to give us a key that worked.

And you know the first words I heard out her mouth (I do know it was late, and it looked like she had been awakened for this service call but still-hospitality please?) were "Don't you have a car to come get the keys?" in her young crabby voice. I replied calmly and sincerely..."no, we just flew in and came in a cab, we do not have a car parked here." Although in my head I was thinking " dont you think if we had a car we would have driven right over so that we could have had the key in less than half the time it took you to get here...I do have a two year and its now 2 in the morning? But I was nice, which took her aback and she changed immediately into her nice sweet self which I am sure she is most of the time and let us in. We settled in the best we could and slept for a few hours before waking and needing to get up to catch the next flight.

We walked with Erik riding one suitcase down a ways to a McDonald's or Makka's as they call it in Oz that we had seen the night before so we could use their wi-fi to call my parents via skype to update them and let them know we arrived and tell them what the next leg should look like.

***TIP**** when traveling into a foreign country where you don't have a cell phone plan...buy a PREPAID PHONE as soon as you can, that would have saved us a lot of stress early on. Eventually we did buy one on our trip to help out with travels home but it should have been one of the FIRST things we did.

We made it to the base and onto to the next flight with a few hours delay (and no way to tell the rents) and landed at 12 am Sunday morning. There was a bit of drama once we landed at the base in Seattle because their passenger terminal was closed on the base for a few days and there was no way for us to get from the flight line to the front gate where my parents had been patiently waiting for us in the dark info wise. We talked a young airman that drove the crew to take us there (He will receive blessings) and we reunited with family. So our saturday was lived two days in a row and we continued to drove through the night to get back to Spokane 6 am Sunday morning. Crazy and exciting! We had made it!