We Praise the Lord for safe and enjoyable travels!!!
Can you imagine leaving home at 6:15 AM and getting to bed shortly after midnight and completely enjoying the day travelling with 6 children? Well, that's how it went and that's why I say Praise the Lord for His goodness!
As I said, we left home right about 6:15 AM, drove to Chicago, stopped along the way to purchase Subway sandwiches for our meals instead of making our own or spending outrageous airport prices!!! We then proceeded to Aunt Marlene's house to pick her up, she went with us to the airport and drove our van home to keep at her house while we are gone.
There was no line for checking in and that went smoothly, except for the panic we heard in the ticket agents voice when she realized she had sent all but the last bag ahead and realized that the last bag was way overweight - we remedied that by having Jared get off the scale!!! The bag weighed 2/10ths of a pound under 50#. Boy am I good! :) ha ha (50# is the limit).
Getting through security also went smoothly although it takes extra time having to take everyone's shoes off, put them back on, and then have everybody loaded back up with the appropriate luggage to carry or drag.
The flights went well, the descent bothered the children's ears, but they did o.k. We had one Frequent Flyer ticket which puts you in first class so Jonas and I were honored with that position. On the first flight Jonas fell asleep during take off so I had most of the trip to have my devotions and meditate a little... I will share some thoughts later.
Jonas woke up just after they gave out warm chocolate chip cookies so I had to about stuff the whole thing in my mouth after I pried most of it out of his hand. They were very yummy and very messy! :) We had plenty of snacks, so I dug some out for him to replace the cookie I didn't share.
Grandma Plattner provided some treat bags with little travel gifts for the children. They helped occupy them quite a bit. I was surprised at how long Jonas attention was kept by the Cheerios book and some Cheerios. We will save the rest of the Cheerios for the way home because it helped pass some time.
The children will have to help me blog how they spent their time and what they liked. For now, I am weary so I'm just relaxing at the computer in quietness. :)
Both flights the flight attendants and some of the passengers commented on how well the children travelled.
In Miami we took a walk and read a few books, time went quickly. On the second leg of our journey I sat by a man from Port Au Prince Haiti and he married a girl from La Cayes. That fact will only be significant to the Plattners.
When we boarded that flight we were given papers to fill out for immigration and customs. We were told we only needed one for each adult and the children would just go on the back of the form.
When we arrived in Montego Bay, we were the last ones off the airplane because our family was at the back of the plane (which generally was probably a good thing). Then we had to wait because the stroller was not brought up to us yet. Then we had the L O N G . . . walk from the plane to immigration. When we got there we were informed that we were misinformed and that each child needed a form filled out. The good news is that by the time we were done filling out the forms there was no waiting line. The bad news is that everyone wanted to go home and they were the ones waiting on us!
They were all very kind and we got through quickly. Although this was a bit of an inconvenience and we were all very tired, the children, though quite wound up, were actually quite obedient. They had to be told to settle down a few times, but when told they obeyed, we were not dealing with disobedience, just children that were very excited and had a lot of energy to burn after a great deal of sitting.
No bags lost and now we just had a three hour drive to Knockpatrick. I stayed awake most of the trip for fear of getting a bad headache on the winding roads if I wasn't watching. I finally couldn't stay awake any longer and took a short doze just for Jonas to wake me up so I could feed him. We arrived at the compound around midnight and I couldn't wait to get in bed. The children had other ideas, they had a 3 hour nap on our drive from the airport so they were refreshed and ready to explore! No go, to bed with all of you and no talking. They did settle down but several were awake at 6:30 AM. The Lord blessed again as Jesse came back to get something out of our room just as Jonas was ready to get down and play so he was able to take him back with him to Kirk and Keri's apartment so I could sleep awhile longer.
Today I organized our room a little and we ate lunch in the school cafeteria. We were swarmed by children trying to talk to us and it probably made it worse because I could sign a few things and then they would keep signing but Keri wasn't close by to interpret what I didn't know or tell them to slow down.
Jonas is down for a nap and I'm considering joining him!!
I'll try to post some pictures later.
This is Jubilee waiting for take off.
This is when we were riding back to Kirk's house and some of our seat belts didn't work and it was like Kirk was riding on the wrong side of the van. And Jared fell asleep while we were driving and if we stopped too fast he would have fallen out of his seat because he didn't have a seat belt. I was sitting by Jolene and then we stopped a little too fast and the cargo toppled over on Jolene and she got hurt but I didn't get hurt too bad. When we got there we unloaded quickly and then went to bed. The bathrooms were dirty and there was a lizard in the house. I didn't see it but Jared and daddy did. The beds were really creaky. I'm starting to get used to it now and now I sort of know what to expect from it. It was hard to believe that we were in Jamaica because we went from in our house being really really really cold to in Jamaica being really really really hot. It was a long day.
I read to Drew but we didn't have a picture so I just put in a picture of Jesse reading to them.
