We left our hotel in Hanoi at 8:30 am on Wednesday, March 19th Vietnam time (that would be 8:30 pm Tues. eve, March 18th, Illinois time). We walked in our front door on Friday night, March 21st, shortly before midnight. So about 75 hours door to door. Let me just say that is a LONG time to be traveling with 4 kids and a baby. We had a few unexpected (and unwelcome) delays along the way.
Unfortunately, I was too stressed to even bother taking many pictures of the trip home, which I regret now. But all we could think of at the time was "get us home!"
Here are a couple pictures of rice fields on the way to the Hanoi airport:
You can see a cemetary in the distance in this picture. We saw alot of above-ground cemetaries out in the middle of fields all over Vietnam.
On the way to the airport, I was feeling pretty confident in my ability to get all of us and our bags checked in with lots of time to spare. After all, I had just taken Lauren there two days before, so I knew exactly where to go. Only problem was, on Monday with Lauren, the airport was practically empty. Today, the entire population of northern Vietnam was in the international flights area when we walked in the door. I kid you not--it was more crowded than Walt Disney World during the fireworks on New Year's Eve. We had grabbed two carts outside when we unloaded our multitude of bags from the taxi, and they were both piled high. So picture Don and I each pushing a cart-o-luggage, holding a baby, and trying to keep 4 more kids together while wading through a sea of humanity to try to find the right counter to check in. Oh, and nobody spoke English that day either. For the first time in this entire amazing trip, I was beginning to panic. We could barely move through the people, and it was impossible to see where any line to the counters began. I finally figured out that all of these people were waiting for flights to Moscow, according to the signs above the counters. Now, why 5,000 (seemed like it!) Vietnamese people felt the need to go to Moscow on this particular day, I'll probably never know, but I was quite relieved when we realized that we didn't need to be in *that* mess! We eventually pushed our way thru the crowd and made it to the correct counters for our flight to Hong Kong with FAR fewer people waiting, thank goodness. Crisis averted. Our flight to Hong Kong was fine, and we made it thru the Hong Kong airport to our gate for our flight to LA, but then there was another security check at the gate as we were boarding our flight. I am very lucky that I didn't end up in a Hong Kong jail, because I sort of lost it on the young security guy who was checking my diaper bag and didn't want to let me take the 2 sealed, unopened water bottles I had for mixing Lily's formula. This had never been a problem before, and I was a *little* stressed, so I started arguing with him and saying, in a too-loud voice, "well then you tell me how I'm supposed to feed my baby?!" Then another security guy comes over and tells me to calm down, and he tells me the other guy is new, it's ok to take the water afterall. Good, I won't have to kill you then.
We had 2 seats in the bulkhead of the 747, and the other 4 seats were in the middle, about 6 or so rows behind us, so we were separated again on the long flight. Anna and William took turns sitting by me and Lily, and Don sat with the rest of the kids. They gave us the bassinet that attaches to the wall in front of the seat, but Lily didn't sleep well in it at all, so I held her for most of the flight, but she did pretty well.
We finally arrived in LA around 2 pm LA time on Wed. Mar. 19th. Lily automatically became a US citizen when we touched down on US soil. YAY! I really wish I had gotten a picture of that, but I couldn't begin to tell you which bag the camera was in at this point, and we had other things to worry about. We had to go thru customs and then get to another terminal for our flight to Denver and then on to Moline. The lines going thru customs were LONG, and we were literally running to try to make it in time for our flight to Denver. We got to the United counter in the nick of time to check in, only to be told that our flight had been cancelled due to mechanical reasons, and the next flight he could get us on was into Chicago with a connecting flight to Moline, but that didn't leave until 11pm the next night (Thursday nite)! ARRRGH! So United had to put us up at a Quality Inn near the airport until then. At least we got to sleep a little, but everyone's internal clocks were so screwed up that it wasn't a good night's sleep. Lily was having night terrors or something, because she would wake up and look around and be inconsolable because she didn't know where she was. I called Lauren to let her know we were stuck in LA and she suggested we go to Hollywood and sight-see. As if! I don't care how boring and ugly our little airport neighborhood was, I wasn't about to get in one more vehicle that I didn't have to!
Here's a couple pics of the kids crashed at our LA hotel:
I don't know if this was taken in the LA airport or in Chicago, but she looks cute anyway!
So, we went back to the airport Thursday evening to catch our 11 pm flight to Chicago, and when we checked in, they told us our connecting flight to Moline early the next morning had been cancelled due to the weather. But don't worry about it, they'll put you on the next one. Right. We get into Ohare around 4:30am, and flights are being cancelled left and right due to a snowstorm. There were 4 or 5 scheduled flights to Moline that day, and one by one, they were all cancelled. We decided to rent a minivan and drive thru the storm to get to Moline, but there wasn't a rental car to be had at Ohare. (I guess we weren't the only ones with cancelled flights that day.) We finally got a good United counter agent who did some fancy stuff with her computer and got all of us on the last remaining flight to Moline for the day, scheduled to leave at 2:30pm, but she wasn't very optimistic about whether or not it would be cancelled too. So we just hung out at the airport all day, watching the moniter as our flight kept getting delayed further and further, and the snow falling harder and harder. We really did not know what we would do if it got cancelled; we were out of plan "B's", plan "C's" and even plan "D's". I think we were at plan "F", as in, "you F***ing United people had better get us home or someone is going to die." (We aren't usually violent people, but remember, it's now Friday and we've been traveling with 4 kids and a baby since Tues. night Illinois time, with maybe 4 to 6 sporadic hours of sleep during all that time. We were a little testy by now.) Luckily, we found a kid's play area in our terminal; that really saved the day. By late afternoon, the flight monitor was saying our flight would leave at 6:30pm, so a little before 6 we left the play area and moseyed on down to our gate. We sat there for quite awhile, and then they announced that the flight would be delayed a little longer, because they needed to get some new flight attendents for the trip, because the one's already on the plane had logged too many hours or something. So here are the kids as we waited at the gate to board our flight. Count 'em. 1-2-3-4-5 sleeping kids, plus 8 various carry-on bags for Don and I to figure out how to get on the plane:
We managed to get William and Anna to a zombie-like state, but with walking capabilities when they finally let us board. We managed to somehow carry the rest of them. We had to sit on the runway for what seemed like forever while we waited for them to de-ice the plane, but we finally took off around 8:30 or 9pm. Hallelujah! It was a short flight to Moline, and then we got our van and drove the 1 hr 45 min. trip to Galena. Here's the first picture of the Lily in her new home, right after we got in the door Friday night. It was FREEZING in the house because we had turned the heat way down before we left, so they're all trying to get warm, but VERY glad to be finally home:
It was a long and stressful trip for everyone, but I am so amazed at how well all of the kids, Lily included, handled it. There were a few minor melt-downs on the way, but for all of the time they spent standing in lines or sitting with nothing to do in all of these airports and planes, with very little sleep, they were awesome and I'm so proud of them.
My mom, my brother Bill, and his fiance Stefanie came over to meet Lily on Easter.
Lily does love her food--so far she seems to like everything we've fed her. Taken 3/29/08. 
She absolutely LOVES these Gears. Her favorite toys! They make good teethers too I guess, because she likes to chew on them. She's just starting to get her two bottom front teeth coming through. Taken 4/13/08.
Lily would be happy to relieve Anna of her freezer pop. Taken 4/18/08.
So angelic; she fell asleep with her upper lip sucked in. Taken 4/19/08.
Heh, heh. I know how to use a stick now, Mom!
We went to my cousin's daughter Sarah's wedding 4/26/08. Here are some pictures from the reception:
William was slightly bored.
Anna talking to my niece, Kelley, and her beautiful new baby Kate. Kate was born on 3/21/08, the day we spent under siege in a snowstorm at O'hare airport trying to get home.
Thomas being Thomas. I'm not sure what Richard's problem is.
Anna dancing with the bride, Sarah.
Lily with Grandma and soon-to-be Aunt Stefanie.
Then a week later, on 5/3/08, we had another wedding to attend, this one for Don's niece Amanda. Yes, she's wearing the same dress--shoot me. Here's Lily attending a little princess party with Anna and some of her little cousins.
Two of the princesses, Maria (top center) and Olivia (right) were adopted from Guatemala. Their sister Isabel is in the pink dress in the middle, and another cousin, Makenzie (sorry if I spelled that wrong, Matt & Karrie!) is on the left.
