We made it to the airport fine and got checked in. It was a relief to get all the checked bags out of our hands and only have to worry about counting kids and backpacks after that.
Good byes are never easy, and especially when you are hugging your 16 year-old daughter for the last time in 6 weeks. We squeezed lots of hugs and tears out and finally made our way through security and onto our first 3 hour flight to Beijing.
When we arrived in Beijing we got off the plane outside and transferred on a bus to the terminal. The air was SO gross and you could even see thingies floating around in the air. Yuck. But it was fun to be in China again. We got some Starbucks and waited a short bit for our long connecting twelve hour flight to LAX.
Chris spent this last week in Las Vegas for work, so was able to fly from there to LA to meet up with us. He was there to greet us when we came through customs. Four weeks is a long time to be apart. I don't know how military families do it, makes me appreciate them all the more. We Skyped twice a day and were able to text, so that definitely helped and made us feel not so far apart.
We were scheduled for a 5 hour layover, so that also gave us time to meet up with my brother again. He works only 15 minutes away from the airport, so he brought In-N-Out to us again for lunch. It was his birthday, so we joked that we flew in just for him, but he had to bring the birthday dinner to us! Even though our time together was short, it was great to be with him for a while. Thanks for meeting up with us, Jonathan!
After lunch we had quite a bit of time left, so we sat outside for a while. It wasn't the quietest or cleanest area, but we enjoyed some "fresh" LA air and sunshine. Johanna and Ami rested for a bit on some unused luggage carts. I really wanted to join them, but restrained myself!
So tired, and little did we know that the long day was about to get even longer...
We found a good corner of our terminal to camp out in for our remaining layover. Chris and some of the kids spent some time in a back hallway....the only place they could find outlets to charge electronic devices. I can't believe such a huge international airport doesn't accommodate customers better! We were just getting ready to board our last 3.5 hour flight to STL when the airline announced that there were mechanical problems. The best they could do was fly in another plane (from STL!) and our departure time would be delayed 5.5 hours! Instead of getting in at 10pm, we would not arrive until 3:30am. We made the most of it, used our meal vouchers to get some supper and coffee, and continued our camp out in the terminal. Some of us caught a few winks, but not much.
When we finally arrived in STL we had to wait almost 45 minutes for a shuttle to take us to long term parking to get our van. We finally got on our way and arrived home about 6:45am. We had originally expected that Chris would feel like he was on PST and have no problem driving us home and that we would be home by midnight. Now, he was on "jet lag" with us. In the end, we should have had the airlines get us a hotel in LA and fly home the next morning, but we were just ready to push through and get home.
The kids were so excited to see their 4-week old kittens that they had only seen through Skype. Cute!
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