24 hour trip

I finally have a moment to write or a moment I felt like writing. :)  Everyone is sleeping and I am hoping if I go to bed a little later it will help me sleep all night.  Since I"ve been here I woke up early each morning and could not go back to sleep but hopefully tonight will be different.

It has already been so wonderful being here.  It is so nice being with my parents again, I got some great quality time with my cousin in Budapest and I am just so relaxed. :) Ehren told me I don"t have a jet leg, I am just finally totally relaxed and that is making me tired and I think he is right.  I love not having any worries when I get up, no schedule to follow, meals to plan and make, or anything.  It is a true vacation for me and the only thing better would be if the rest of my family was here.  It is not easy at all being away from the boys.

But, back to our BIG trip.  Anika was so excited about her big trip and it was all she talked about for a week.  So I should have known that with all that excitement it was not going to be easy for her to sleep.  We had to get up at 2am on Sunday morning and head to Fargo.  I thought for sure Ani would just go back to sleep once we loaded her into the van but no, she could not sleep at all.  She could not wait to get on the airplane.  And the first airplane, going to Chicago, was actually pretty good.  She loved everything about it and was just all excited, talking nonstop.  I started telling her early on that there will be 3 planes to get on so she kind of knew that but I am pretty sure she had no idea how long that would actually take.  We got to Chicago right away and there was our very long layover, around 5 hours long.  We tried to kill time as much as we could looking at stores, having lunch, then reading books in a book store (I think the clerk wasn"t very happy about it so I at least bought one book for the kids).  During times when Ani was entertaining herself with coloring I was kind of enjoying people watching.  It"s amazing how many different people you come across at an airport.  But most of all, I was wishing I had Ehren"s laptop or another device that would play kids shows for Anika because she was bored with her big activity bagpack after so many hours.

Next up was our LOOONG flight which took about 8 hours, flying to Frankfurt, Germany.  It started out ok and Ani was once again excited to get on a new plane but the excitement didn"t last too long as she was getting overly tired.  I myself was barely lasting staying up, but I only managed short spells of resting my eyes. Soon it was time to eat "lunch" which was a pretty crazy thing.  First of all, that must have been the worst food I ever saw on the plane.  The chicken looked like it was thrown into some boiling water and had pasta that was half dried up.  Of course I asked for Ani"s meal since I wasn"t going to gamble and see if she would throw a fit about not getting any food even though I knew she was way too tired to really eat.  So needless to say she barely touched her food and when the stewardess came to get it she had a pretty rude remark about Ani not eating anything.  I politely smiled and said "sorry" even though I was at a point I wanted to scream at her and say that she has no idea how tired this little girl is who"s been up since 2am.  And what does she care anyway, she didn"t pay for the meal.  After that Anika finally took a little nap, about 2 hours where she would rest her head in my lap and I was so glad she is finally quiet.  I still didn"t sleep much because my back hurt a lot in that position.  After Ani"s little nap she started fussing and crying which I knew was because she wanted to sleep more but couldn"t get comfortable.  We were also running out of her entertainment workbooks and stuff to do and unfortunatelly out of 8 movies they showed there was absolutely nothing for little kids.  So she started saying how she doesn"t want to be on a trip anymore, she wants to go home.  I didn"t blame her at all, I didn"t want to be there either.  So after that we started having bathroom breaks every 20 minutes where Anika would push out a tiny bit of pee  each time even though she would cry that she had to poop when we were sitting down.  I knew she must have been constipated and just had cramps but we had to keep going to the bathroom and luckily it was very close to our seats.  Finally, it was time to land in Frankfurt and once again Ani got all excited about our last, third airplane ride so that was good except we had over 2 hours of time to kill before then.  We got to our gate and thankflully it was pretty quiet and empty so I got Ani"s coloring books out and I lied down next to her.  I was so out of it I couldn"t even keep my eyes open but there was our little chipery Anika, her mouth not stopping for a minute. In a way I was glad she kept talking because that way I knew she was still nearby and I just kept thinking to myself if I had Kason with me who runs everywhere I would be a total basket case.

So our final airplane ride came and we were heading to our destination - Budapest.  So far the 2 flights were with United airlines and our last one was Lufthansa.  Man what a difference!  I"d fly Lufthansa anywhere, especially with kids.  They were all so nice to Ani and even brought her a special toy and fruit snack.  Finally, Ani"s energy was running out and she pretty much slept through the whole flight which was fine by me other than when it was time to land I could not wake her up and she cried pretty loudly that she had to get buckled and couldn"t lie down anymore.  But after a bit of waking up she was all ready to meet my cousin Sarlota, who Anika"s middle name is after.  When Ani saw her she said "she looks like on the picture" and I thought that was so cute.

As for me, I was more than happy to end our 24 hour trip.  I know people flying to Asia or wherever have it way harder but for me, this must be the limit when flying alone with any number of kids.  In the end though, it is always so worth it to be with my family and see my home country again but man, is it far. :)  I have to say Anika did awesome for how long of a trip that was, with how early she was up before we flew.  She is a trooper and going back will be so much easier.  The trip did confuse her with sleeping and day time-night time because she still asks me sometimes "is it day time now?" and "is it time for bed?" but she is doing great.

I will post some pictures here in the morning of our big trip and will try to post some other ones soon too of our little adventures since we got here.  Hope you are all doing great!

having some breakfast before we take off

the first airplane