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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

TRAVEL DAY!
The alarm goes off at 5:30am but I have been stirring for sometime now. I am a nervous wreck. I get up and get in the shower. Apparently the shower wakes up Kyle and he is up with him feeding him. Brooke sleeps awhile longer so this lets us finish up with our last minute stuff. The morning gets away from me and the time just flies. Before you know it, it's almost 8:30am and we need to be downstairs for the driver who is going to take us to the airport. Our flight doesn't leave until 12:25pm but we have to get there early so they can re-ticket us. Unfortunately, the flight is booked and we didn't buy extra seats for the kids. They will be on our laps the entire way. Oh lucky us!

We make it down to the lobby and get our bill paid and our luggage in the van. We are on our way. It's hard to believe that we are actually on our way home. The traffic in Moscow isn't so bad this morning. We make it to the airport by 9:15am. We head to the Delta counter, get our tickets from them and they waive the $400 since we have our letter. Thank God! We then continue on to the security. The crap thing about this airport, is that security has you open up ALL of your luggage so they can rummage through it. This sucks as we have to kids on our front. The nice part is that this lady pulls us out of line and puts us to the front. Gotta love traveling with kids. Brooke has now fallen asleep and is taking a little nap. Security goes through our luggage, we get it locked back up and loaded back up on our cart and headed to checking it in. We of course have to pay again for an overweight bag. Whatever!!! All this lugging around and Steve and I are all sweaty. We get the bags checked, our fee paid and we are now on our way to pass through customs. We had over all of our passports and she wants to see the kids' paperwork. We hand that over and it seems like she is taking forever. She finally waves us through and we head to the gate. We want to be prepared so we wash out the baby bottles in the bathroom and get those loaded so we can be ready in a minute. We get to the gate and sit down. We get the kids some fresh diapers and prepare to load. Again they let us go in front since we have little ones. Steve was able to arrange it so one of us could have the bulk head row. The plane is another 2-3-2 seating and I'm in the 3 part on the aisle. Steve is a row back but in the 2 seat part. We get on and this gentleman was kind enough to switch with Steve so we could sit next to each other. We get situated and prepare for this flight which we hope is not from hell. This first leg of the flight is a little over 10 hours. I don't know how you can prepare yourself for this journey. I think you just have to do what you have to do. I'm not going to go through the flight hour by hour. I'll just tell you that it was LONG and we didn't get that much sleep. Brooke was a bit fussy because I wanted her to sleep and she was screaming a bit. If she got too bad, I would go into the bathroom and try to calm her down. i could tell she was totally tired and just fighting off sleep. Of course we had lots of food on board for Kyle so whenever he fussed, he got food. I didn't really eat breakfast that morning. I was a nervous wreck so I didn't feel like taking my shift at the buffet. Steve did though. When the flight attendants came around with food, I didn't know how we were going to do it with 2 sleeping kids on our laps. Steve got his tray table out and had them put 2 meals down. He was nice enough to feed me some rice and chicken while Brooke slept. He then ate his meal. The next meal that came was hours later and it was a sandwich of some sort. It was like a cheese and tomato sandwich. YUCK. I skipped that meal and figured I get something to eat at JFK.

After 10 long hours with barely no sleep, we land at JFK. We gather our belongs and head out. We walk towards customs and this is where we will hand over our paperwork that we got at the embassy and hand to them. This will officially make the kids US citizens. All of the paperwork that we did before hand made the kids American the minute they touched American soil. I wanted to take them out of the carriers and have them touch the ground. Again it was nice to be traveling with kids. We were standing in line at customs waiting and the kids were getting just a little fussy. Us along with another woman were pulled out of line and put at the front. Yah baby! We made it through there and then had to go into another room. I'm not really sure what that guy did but he cleared us through. We then had to grab our luggage and have it re-checked. We also had to go through security. I was nervous they would take our water away. i saw a TSA guys and asked him. He said to have it go through the systems and if it beeped, they would take it. We got that done and headed toward our gate. The only bad thing about going through that security was that they made us take the kids out of the carriers and place the carriers through. We managed and we were on our way. We got to the gate and I took all of the bottles and went to the bathroom to wash them out again so we could prepare ourself for the next leg which was going to be 6 hours or so. Go the bottles loaded back up again and went to sit back down with Steve. He had given Kyle some apple juice on the last flight. This of course caused a poopy diaper. Got that changed and we were waiting to board. Right before that, Kyle did another number in his pants and I had to change him again. let's just hope he got it out of his system and I don't have to do that on the flight. This is another packed flight and we are again not ticketed to sit next to each other. We have now changed kids. I have Kyle and Steve has Brooke. Right as we get on the plane, Kyle is hungry. Boy can this kid eat! i feed him and wait for the person to come to their seat so I can hopefully sit on the aisle. We all sort of play musical chairs and Steve and I are now sitting next to each other again. The plane is taking forever to get moved away from the gate. It's one delay after another. Kyle starts to get fussy which calls the attention of the flight attendant. She comes over to tell us that Steve and I can't sit next to each other. This of course pisses me off and I tell her that we did it all the way from Russia. The gal in front of us offers to switch with me. I am now in front of Steve. I get the stewardess to get the rest of Kyle's formula out of my backpack which is in the overhead. I give it to him and he falls back asleep. We were on that plane before takeoff for an hour and a half. Something to do with the tower holding planes back due to weather. I swear we are never going to get home. Kyle does pretty well on the flight and I am able to sleep a bit. Since I didn't get anything to eat at JFK, my stomach is soooo hungry that I feel sick. I get up with Kyle and go to the back and ask if they can give me some peanuts. The lady gives me a handful and i"m back to my seat. The young kid that is sitting next to me is really nice and helps me out a bit. The come around with a snack on the flight and it's cheese and crackers. I eat a little but it's too hard with Kyle on my lap. I am able to fall back asleep for a bit and when I wake, I ask the stewardess what time it is and when we will land. She tells me that we took a detour in the air due to the weather so we're now going to be landing at 9:30pm. Oh good god. Really, we are never going to get there. It's a bumpy ride down on our decent but we finally make it to LAX. We are tired, dirty and exhausted. The kids are just as tired. We get our luggage and head to the shuttle. We make it to the car and I have no idea how the kids are going to do their car seats. They have never ridden in them before as they don't use them in Russia. Kids just sit on your lap in the car. We buckle them in and we are on our way. They are not screaming as they are just too tired. I turn around and Kyle's head is totally slumped over. EWWW. Total Brittney Spears. I put it back up and he is out sleeping with his mouth wide open. Just like his momma. Brooke is again fighting off sleep in her car seat. She finally passes out. Steve and I are both hungry and decide it's another McDonald's night at the same place that we stopped the last time we came in. We grab our food and scarf it down in the car of course hiding the drink cup so Kyle doesn't see it. We make it home and it's close to midnight. The house has been decorated up and there are welcome signs and balloons. It's a nice sight to see. We get the kids in the house and our fur kids are waiting for us. Buddy is glad to see us and we are just glad to be home. We introduce the kids to the animals and they are not afraid of them. This is a good thing. We get them fed and put in their PJ;s. We put them in their new cribs and head off to the shower. Kyle screams for about 10 minutes and then passes out. Gotta love the new baby monitor. It's now a little after 1am and Steve and I pass out from exhaustion. We are glad to be home with our 2 new little ones and our new life can finally begin. Now let's just hope they will sleep for awhile so we can get caught up. It is great to be back in our bed again and not on that plane.

Well, that is it for our journey to Russia and back. I will continue to post here and update everyone on the kids. Before you know it, they will be turning 1 which is right around the corner. Thanks to everyone for their support to Steve and I during time. At times it really helped pull us through. We'll be seeing all of you shortly with our 2 new bundles.

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