Alexander Family's Big Adventure: Whew! That was tough. (Part I)

To sum it up: We made it! (And that's what matters.)

Our driver, Mahmoud, arrived promptly at 11:30. Dave and I were frantically trying to get things cleaned up and put away because finishing packing and preparing the house for our long absence just didn't seem like it was ever going to happen. I woke up at 7:30 that morning to get stuff done, and the time just flew. At least when the driver arrived, it was time to go, and what we had completed would just have to be good enough.

Mahmoud was a dear man. He loaded all of the suitcases into the van, and THEN he loaded all of the car seats into the van and did it properly (I checked). We didn't drive away until a few minutes after twelve, and I'm pretty sure that Mr. Mahmoud was relieved to find out that our flight wasn't until 5:20. He was an interesting man who knew a lot of interesting facts about the most various things. He was quite comfortable driving to Dulles, and I was comfortable to have him do it. The kids were all good in the van and had a lot of energetic excitement, but they fell asleep since they hadn't been sleeping as much over the past week or more with all the changes and activities going on.

Thanks to the Fly America Act, we flew United. In spite of the bad press, they checked us in very smoothly. A woman guided us through the process as though she were our personal assistant. Many people mentioned to us how good the kids were behaving, and it was true. They were being very good. Getting through security and all the way to the gate was uneventful, although Daddy mentioned that Livvy was having an episode at one point when he took her to the restroom. She locked it down quickly enough, though, because I didn't even know about it until later.

I thought we might have had a ridiculous amount of extra time to wait since we left the house so early, but it turned out that we only had about 50 minutes before boarding once we got to the gate. So we got the kids pretzels and got ourselves some burgers. There was just enough time to eat them before boarding.

I checked my ticket for the row number (45, second row from the back in the 777), and set up two harnesses for the girls, one which I bought for Lilly and one which was given to me from a good friend (THANK YOU!). But then I learned a lesson that I should have checked the seats while checking in to make sure that they were actually the seats reserved. Somehow 5 of us had been assigned in 1 row (row 44), and I was assigned in row 45. That would mean that Dave would be able to sit with the boys, but I would not be able to sit with the girls. That clearly wouldn't work! Fortunately, a gracious grandma (self-professed) choreographed a rearrangement of seats that involved multiple people so that I could sit with the girls. I reset the special buckles to row 44, buckled the girls back in, and shortly after that, Lilly fell asleep. I snapped some pictures just for YOU (below, of course), and at last, we were ready to fly away.