A Year Ago Today…

We were back in the good old USA.

But not before a grueling 19+ hour flight!

I have to say that Ben must have been the best behaved kid ever in the history of air travel. First he fell asleep before we even took off, and then he slept for over six hours, until we landed in Rome for the cleaning/refueling/crew change nonsense.

Then he woke up, and decided he loved this airplane stuff. He was perfectly content having our undivided attention, a bag full of toys and snacks, his own little TV and headphones!
I had brought a few DVD’s that we watched during the week on our little portable DVD player, and he enjoyed those until the battery died. (His MOST favorite movie was Madagascar, and his MOST favorite character was Alex the Lion.)

He did some coloring, played with Legos, played with Play Doh and loved the music channels he could listen to with his headphones. He would find a good song, start dancing in his seat, and then tell us “Three! Hear Three!” (meaning, “listen to channel three”). He also napped on and off. He never cried or got wild or had a fit or anything…seriously, he was awesome.

He wasn’t overly impressed with the airline food, but neither were we. I was really glad we had brought a lot of snacks for him.

In fact he enjoyed the airplane so much, that when we were landing after the 19 hour leg, I told him all excitedly that we were done and the "plane was going down" and he said, "no, plane up"!

As we were landing in Washington D.C., I looked at Josh and said that I never wished we lived in Washington so badly in my whole life!!!! The thought of a few more flights was almost too much to handle at that point, but luckily we had decided to spend a night in DC to get rested and showered before arriving home to the rest of our crew.

We got off the plane and followed the herds through immigration and into the baggage area, all uneventfully. We said good-bye to the families we had traveled with, found all of our bags, and then headed off to the great outdoors to find our shuttle bus to the hotel. It was Ben’s first encounter with the cold (February in Washington DC) and he thought it was crazy I think! Seeing his breath he thought was super cool, and he kept saying, “Mom, Cold!” with this huge smile on his face, and rubbing his arms up and down to keep warm (we did have a warm coat for him, but we’ve since discovered that the boy will shiver in a heated room!)

When we got to the hotel, we had our first real big culture shock for Ben (in a good way). He could not get over the automatic door at the hotel…you know, where you step in front of it and it opens…he was just amazed and watched it open and close over and over again. Normally we don’t let our kids play with that sort of thing, but we couldn’t help but let him because he was so amazed and it was really funny.

We got up to our room, and found my Dad shortly thereafter. He had flown down from New York to spend the day and night with us and to meet his newest grandson. We got some much-needed showers, and then went down to one of the hotel restaurants with my Dad. We told him about our adventures, all about Ben and had a lot of fun catching up with him (and eating good old American food!)

Towards the end of the meal it was obvious that Ben was going to fall asleep in his chair if we didn’t move him soon, so we took him upstairs and he and Josh laid down for “a nap”. Josh told me to wake them up for dinner. I went and hung out in my Dad’s room (next door) for a few hours, until it was time to wake up the boys. Well, there was NO waking them up. I gave them another hour and then tried it again…not happening. It was obvious at that point that neither one of them was going to get up, so I went with the old saying, “If you can’t beat them, join them” and I said goodnight to my Dad (even though it was only 8 p.m.) and I collapsed into bed with them.