Texas!!!!

Since moving here back in October the girls have been very homesick and missing there friends something terrible.  They were constantly asking me when we were going to go back and when we could go to Stacia's again, or play at the park with Grant & Grayson, or go play dress up at Presleys.  Every fire truck they asked if it was Mr. Steve and then we would have long talks about the Taylors and the McCrays.  Needless to say they were very homesick and well lets be honest so was I.  I missed all of our wonderful friends and the routines that we had developed over the years.  I missed seeing all the kids not to mention the support that I had developed with such wonderful women.  But what were we to do, we prayed for a very long time and this is where God wants us right now.  As an adult I get that but try explaining that over and over to a 4 & 2 year old.  I do think they get it to a point but as a child they just don't quite understand that we just can't get on the next plane and fly to Texas when ever we want.

Well a few months back I received an email about an airfare sale going to Houston. (I am always watching flights to & from Nebraska, Jersey & now Texas.)  So I chatted with Mark about it and about the benifits I think it would have for the kids (and I) to go back and see their friends, to understand that yes they are far away but they are still in our lives just like Grandma & PopPop and Grammy & Papa.  Being the wonderful husband he is he agreed to the trip.  I figured this was a trip I would be doing on my own but the flights were at such a great cost that he even came with us!!  We did not tell the girls we were going until the morning of! I recorded us telling them but the video was just too long to upload on here.  They were very excited!!

I wish every airport had this!!  At the Seattle airport they have play rooms for younger children to wait for their flights!  Had I known this we maybe would have left a little earlier to be even less stressed and then let them go crazy in one of these rooms.  Just simply genius if you ask me.  They get to go and climb and run and burn all their energy out and have fun before they are required to sit in a single seat for several hours.  The best as far as I'm concerned!!

Poor Thor could only watch this time.

The flights going to Texas were a little rough.  We had to make a connection in Denver, which is not the end of the world but Mark hates connections.  It doesn't really matter to me one way or another unless a nonstop flight is a hundred dollars more than a flight that connects.  If that is the case I would take the connecting flight every time!  Anyways we had to connect in Denver and this is where it all went wrong.  Our flight leaving Seattle was a little behind schedule so by the time we landed in Denver we had to just board the next flight right away. No time to even stop and use the restroom.  Even this was not so horrible the worse was what happened on the flight landing into Denver.  If you ask Grace she will just simply tell you she got plane sick!! Yup that is right we actually had to use one of those little bags cause she threw up.  Mark was sitting with the two girls on that leg of the trip and thankfully he was able to get all of it into the little bag!  The worse came after that trip.  We got on the next flight to go to Houston and all was fine until it came to landing.  She was so nervous cause she thought she was going to get plane sick again.  She didn't!!
This is what I think happened, she gets car sick a ton so much that I actually keep a bucket in the car.  On this flight she was watching the little TV in front of her and then she would stop and stare out the window and watch everything passing by on the ground.  Then she would look at the TV and then out the window and so on and so forth plus add in a very bumpy landing and we now have a plane sick child on our hands!! Boo...

We arrived in Texas around 6:00 in the evening, which is 4:00 for us, and then we had to drive down to Friendswood which is about an hour drive give or take.  Lori & Nicholas picked us up at the airport and by the time we ate dinner and arrived to Aimee's the boys were already in bed.  So the girls had to wait to see their friends until the morning.  I was still back in the room with Thor so I didn't get to see or didn't capture any excited faces when they saw each other.  Later that morning Margot & Natalee came over to say hello too!  I love this picture above it is is like they are all sitting around the table catching up on what has happened in the last 6 months!  Eva is missing from the picture cause she was still sleeping.

However when she woke up and saw everyone if her eyes could have popped out I think they would have.  She was just too excited for words.  A little later that morning Stacia captured this extremely cute picture of Eva and Natalee!!  They loved being together again!

These two pictures are on the plane coming back to Seattle.
We had yet another issue with our flights but it worked out to our advantage.  Our flight leaving Houston was delayed by over an hour which meant we would miss our connection in Denver.  I called the airline and asked them what they were going to do for me.  They got us on another flight with a different carrier and it was nonstop!!  We ended up getting into Seattle 2 hours earlier than we were suppose too!!  However we could not all sit next to each other.  We were in the same row just 2 on each side.  Mark choose to sit with Eva & I had Grace and Thor. Everything went great until landing again.  Grace basically had a huge panic attack cause she was so sure she was going to get sick. To complicate it even more she decided that she needed to be with Daddy for the landing but Eva also wanted to be with Daddy.  We switched them and Eva was not happy.  Needless to say by the time we landed both girls were crying and Mark had both of them.  We cheated and had Eva sitting on Mark's lap but she is small for her age and she is only 2 and I'm sure every passenger on the plane was happy we did that cause she was no longer screaming at the top of her lungs!! :)  As far as Thor, he was the perfect baby and slept the whole flight home! :) Oh and Grace did not get sick!

So did the trip and my plan work? Did it help the girls?  Yes, yes I think it did.  They (we) still miss everyone down there and we still talk about and pray for everyone down there but it is different.  It is like they finally have closure with moving away and have seemed to accept that this is now home.  If only the hurt of missing our friends was still not so strong....at least for me.....but it will get there.  I know I will always miss them terribly cause I still miss my friends in Jersey the same way but it lessens I guess.  Not to be morbid but it is sort of like when a love one dies.  You will always miss them and long to be with them but with each passing day it gets just a little easier.  Does that make sense? Anyways, I already can't wait until the next time I get to see them again in person!! But until then there is always Skype or FaceTime!  (Hint hint to those of you in Texas;) Hehe)

I did take way more pictures than these but I took so many and we saw so many that I have broken down our trip into several post.  Those will follow in the coming days.