The Flight (s)

For everyone dying for the play-by-play of the last couple of days spent traveling, here you go!

We left CA on Wednesday night at 9:30 PM and arrived in Ft. Lauderdale at 1:30 AM (CA time). The kids all slept fairly decently...Zach was next to a lady throwing up and Emma had a hard time getting comfortable until I let her sprawl out all over Camilla (literally). But other than that, everyone got almost 3 solid hours of sleep. I slept about 2 hours or so while balancing Emma's appendages to keep her asleep.

My only real complaint was that the flight crew wasn't very patient or understanding of 4 hours old functioning on 3 hours of sleep. Poor Alex was soooo tired when we got to the airport in Florida, it took him a while to get his shoes back on and get moving. A comment was made similar to, "Come on buddy, we're tired, too, and we want to get home. So, let's get moving." To which, of course, he started crying, had an accident, and moved even slower...less effective.

We were supposed to have a 4 hour layover in Florida, but it ended up being about 6 hours... All the kids were very good to lay down for their obligatory naps in the airport (except Emma who was ready to go for the day), but only Alex actually fell back asleep. So, by the time we boarded again, Zach and Camilla were getting tired. Of course Zach only slept about 20 min...but Camilla had a good nap. Emma slept the ENITRE flight...which meant that Mommy got a little nap, too!

When we got to the San Juan, Puerto Rico Airport, we had been traveling about 16 hours from the time we left our house on the west coast all the way to the Caribbean. And we were all alive to tell the tell! Zach was REALLY struggling from sleep deprivation after we got there...I think his body was "done" at that point. He was so excited, and yet he burst out in tears as he told me how cool Puerto Rico is because it's really hot and really humid/rainy (as opposed to hot and dry...he's our "analyzer" - always comparing and contrasting things). It was so sad!

On a lighter note, the most exciting part of the trip was at the end of the 2nd flight. The pilot was really nice and just chatted with the kids. Then he asked the kids if they wanted to sit in the cockpit and take a picture. They were were so excited!