A Long Journey

We finally made it to Georgia! We left Japan October 18th. Our plane left at around 11 am that Sunday morning, we flew to mainland Japan which took us 3 hours if I remember right. We had a small layover in Narita and then took off for Hawaii. That flight took us 8 hours, but with a time difference of 19 hours! Needless to say, we were tired. The funny thing was we landed at 7 am on that Sunday morning...before we left Japan :) We stayed in Hawaii for almost a week, vacationing there with my parents. The weather there was awesome, the hotel was nice and the food was great! We really enjoyed our time in Hawaii...but like all vacations it ended too soon. We left Hawaii, and my parents, on Friday morning...they had a later flight than us. Next we flew to Chicago, I think that flight took us around 8 hours also. Again, we were so tired b/c of another lovely time change. At least this time it was only 5 hours. We hung out at the Chicago airport for 2 or so hours and then finally boarded a small plane for St. Louis. By the way, our dog Chloe accompanied us through this whole trip. When we were sitting on this plane we realized we hadn't confirmed our dog being loaded. While waiting for the flight attendant to make her way back to us so we could ask her to check, Josiah yells out, "There's Chloe!!!" Sure enough, there was our dog, panicking in her crate as she is going up the conveyor belt onto the plane. :) Well, she wasn't really panicking, just pacing in place. Poor dog. She was probably wondering what was going on...while in Hawaii she was in quarantine the whole week. We finally take off for St. Louis, which was a wonderful short flight and there to meet us was Jeff's parents, such a nice sight to see when all the other airports you arrive at are full of people you don't know. We arrived in MO on Saturday morning. And again...needless to say, after all this flying and time change, our family was hit with jet lag. I took a nap that afternoon and that was the wrong thing to do. It was so hard to wake up, and napping made me feel much worse. I spent the rest of the day in a fog, just drifting around the house, trying to talk and be sociable....but praying for bed time to roll around. Amazingly, Josiah and Gaber did the best, they stayed awake all day and slept great that night. Kids are amazing creatures! I haven't mentioned Tara yet, she did great the whole way from Japan! She was an amazing flier, thanks to God answering my prayers!, and she did well with the time changes too. I don't think we ever had a hard time getting her to sleep, the boys as well, we just had a hard time getting them to wake up! I had to start setting my alarm for 9 am so that we could get on central time, we were all sleeping in to noon! Eventually we made it down to 8 am. We stayed in MO for 2 weeks, there we celebrated Gaber's 5th birthday at Bonkers and then had a delicious DQ cake at the Rybold's house. A couple days later we were all hit with a nasty plague! Jeff started it, then Gaber, then Siah, then Rose, me, Tom, Megann, and the ones who got it at the end of our trip was Mark and my mom. Not sure if Alicia and her other little ones got it or not. Boy was that not fun. Lets just say nothing would stay down and for some of the sickos nothing could keep them off the toilet! LOL
Enough about that, I don't like thinking about it...the next part of our journey took us to south MO to visit Jack, Cassie and their 4 kids. We spent 2-3 days there, eating and holding their precious new baby girl. After that visit we started our drive down to Georgia which took us 3 days to accomplish. We would have made it sooner if Jeff wouldn't have to stop so many times, I think he was drinking to much soda! :) The boys loved the drive, especially Josiah. He just stared out the windows, in awe of the landscape in the states. It looks so much different than Japan. The boys loved seeing the cows, trains, wide open fields and the beautiful trees. Jeff and I really enjoyed the view too, it had been too long since we've seen our country. Its so nice to be back after spending 6 years overseas. It was a great experience, one that I'm so thankful to God for letting us do, but I'm so happy to be back.
This Saturday we are taking off, again, for MO. We will stop there for a few days and then drive up to Wisconsin for Christmas. We are hoping for snow so the boys can experience building snowmen and sledding and snowball fights!
As soon as I find my wire for the camera I will post some pictures!