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Friday, May 28, 2009

We woke up and had breakfast bright and early. We quickly had a buffet breakfast and checked out to head to the airport. We literally walked only 5 minutes to our United Airlines terminal desk. In this whole process, we had the most difficult time finding our way around the airport. We went up and down elevators, took a short train ride, back up elevators and finally to our gate. It took us almost 45 minutes just to navigate ourselves to the flight gate. One of the best parts of flying with children is that you get to board first! As we sat on the plane waiting to leave, all power went out.

Our plane had electrical/generator problems. A bit unnerving to know that our plane couldn't keep it's generators running. The captain announced that we had to be "pulled back" into the dock to have maintenance crews figure out the problem. After several attempts to start the plane, we were finally heading for the runway. In the meantime, Lillianne was doing GREAT! She played the whole time we were waiting. (We should mention that we had an angel looking out for us prior to departure--when we saw how tight the seats were, we wondered how this was going to work with Lilli on our laps and the diaper bag and backpack barely fitting under the seats. So we asked what we thought was a flight attendant what the cost would be to upgrade--let's just say it would have cost us thousands of dollars to upgrade...so we didn't. The very nice lady, come to find out, was a customer service rep. for United, and I believe she was on the plane trying to evaluate open seats for stand-bys. She came back and told us that she arranged the vacant seat next to us not be filled and it was ours. She was truly a life saver...especially seeing that Anne was about 20 rows behind us. The extra room was a must and kept us sane!) During our flight, Lilli took a 2 hour nap and slept an additional 6 hours. We were so lucky! Only a couple toddler meltdowns, but what can you say for a 21 month old on a 15 and a half our confinded space flight.

When we arrived in Chicago, we couldn't believe we were home. We entered Customs and then collected our baggage. We had a friendly search dog find a few items that should have been consumed on the plane...an apple and boiled egg. No harm, but the dog sure was cute. It distracted Lilli for a while. The last place we needed to check in was Immigration. This is the point where we hand over the Brown Envelope to officials. We had our baggage x-rayed and proceeded through to see Aaron's family waving and smiling. We were so happy to see familiar faces when we arrived back home. We spent about 45 minutes introducing Lillianne to Aaron's family. Katie, Julie's sister was at the airport to take us back home. We were finally on our way home and Lilli fell asleep on her first car ride...so did Aaron.

When we arrived back home, we had a wonderful sign over our pourch saying, Welcome home Lillianne! from our neighbors. We also had a sign inside from Katie's family saying Welcome to America Lillianne! All that is needed to say is We are a family of three and we are home.

Thanks for following our journey to Lillianne. And to all of you who posted comments on our guestbook--thank you! It has been wonderful to read you comments along the way.

We will post an another update soon. Also, we will post pictures on the days that we haven't very soon. Stay tuned!

Finally Home!

Arriving at O'Hare Airport, Chicago

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