I got up at 5:30 this morning, took my shower and got dressed. Tony wanted to go down to a breakfast in the hotel so he got up. I fed Le An his bottle and got him dressed. This breakfast buffet wasn't nearly as extensive as what we've been used to the last 2 weeks. They didn't even have bananas for Le An. We got omelets and he had scrambled eggs. Luckily, with the room service check last night there was a 28% discount available for any restaurant in the hotel good till the end of the month so we saved a little bit with that.
We finished re-packing and were able to work out getting all our luggage pieces down in one trip. Tony checked us out. We put our luggage on a cart and walked the LinkBridge to the Departure Terminal.
We found the United area and I went to the ticketing counter to get Le An's ticket. The agent told Tony to go get into the check-in line and I could join him later. Good advice! Le An's ticket only cost $126 as a lap child. We hoped the seat between us was still available. We got checked in (and the very nice agent didn't even charge us for our 3rd and 4th bags!), went through Immigration and Security and got on the train to find our gate. The HKG airport is an actual MALL! We found our gate and waited.
We got on with family boarding and ... there was someone in our window seat. Hmmmmm.... We sat down and just before we left, he moved to another seat so that we could have all 3 seats. Thank you, God!
Le An sleeping around noise, light and stimulation is not good. He probably only slept 3 hours the whole 14-hour flight. We slept less than that.
We got through Immigration and Customs and Le An became a U.S. Citizen very easily. Our flight to Omaha was not on the Departures screen yet so we got some sandwiches at Quiznos (pretty good! I'd never had Quiznos subs before!) and found a gate that had plenty of open seats for us to be able to eat and for Le An to move around a bit. I called my parents and Dad answered. Mom and Meighan were taking a nap. Then Tony called his parents. We hung out until we knew what gate we would be leaving from.
When we finally got on the very small plane, we got seated and of course Le An decided he didn't want to be confined. He was apparently kicking (ever so slightly and of course we try to keep our kids from doing this) the seat in front of me. The guy in the seat asked that he not do that. So, as we tried to keep him from doing that, he screamed even louder. I whispered to Tony, "Serves that guy right. Would he rather have kicking or screaming?" (I would rather have the kicking than this screaming!) So, even before we left the gate, Le An fell asleep. He slept the entire flight (just like Meighan did!) and woke up when we landed in Omaha.
We knew we would be "composing ourselves" before we went out to greet our family and friends. We also had to change a diaper, too.
We rounded the corner and again there was a wonderful group of people there to welcome us home! Meighan came running to hug us and it was so good to see her!!!
After we all walked up to greet everyone else, Tony asked them "Any guesses?" No one wanted to guess so he said, "We want to introduce Dawson Lee Smith." We had to move around the corner to get out of the way. There were posters and cards and even a balloon that got put on my backpack!
We eventually got all 4 of us together and there were 4-5 cameras taking pictures of us! The topper of the evening was when someone wanted to take a picture and said "1, 2, 3..." and Meighan said "4, 5, 6." She brought the house down. My mom got a picture of all of our big smiles after that.
We got our luggage and pulled our winter coats out and moved on out to our car. Dawson didn't seem to mind the car seat (at first). We drove home and pretty soon my parents arrived with Meighan's things and a few groceries for us. Later on my brother's family stopped by after Tyler's game so they could meet Dawson.
We eventually got everyone to bed and we even got to sleep some! Yeah!
No comments:
Post a Comment