Blogging from Dusseldorf

After church this morning everyone brought me to the airport. The kids wanted me to get out of the van so they could go watch the planes taking off and landing. ;) The girls are beyond excited that I’m leaving to go bring their new sisters home. Every time we talk about it we hear lots of “YAY!!! Our sisters are coming home!”

Yesterday we managed to find a mattress for one of the girls’ new beds, but realized after we got it home that it was an extra-long twin. Mark got two mattresses today after I left that will actually fit the beds he is making. We’ve moved the boys into their new room (what used to be the playroom) and they are so excited. They have now built a cardboard door to keep everyone out. I think “everyone” particularly refers to sisters. We’re going to be splitting up Danielle and Emily which I hope will work out well. We’ve had lots of problems with them waking each other up at night. Now we’ll either solve the problem or have four girls awake at night. The current plan is to have Emily and Julia in a room together and Danielle and Bianca sharing a room. That’s always up for adjustments if we see things aren’t working.

My flights were pretty uneventful. The St Louis to Chicago flight was delayed by almost an hour but I had about a 3 hour layover in Chicago so it didn’t affect me. My flight from Chicago to Dusseldorf was on an Airbus, and I highly recommend it over the 777s. The entire Lufthansa Airbus fleet has the individual seatback screens and you can pick what you watch. I had requested an aisle seat this flight as on our last flight Mark and I were on the inside seats (against the wall of the airplane) and the gentleman on the aisle did not get up once during the entire flight from Chicago to Frankfurt. I take that back, he got up the two times I asked him to get up. But I prefer getting up during the flights much more often than that, and I like to be able to get up without asking permission. ;) So I made sure to get an aisle seat this time. After I was seated, the flight attendant came along and asked if I’d like to move towards the back, as there was an empty aisle seat with another empty seat next to it. Moving gave me and the three gentlemen I was originally sitting with all more room, which was great.

The disadvantage to the seatback screens is that I had no incentive to sleep. :) :) I watched an episode of Mr. Monk, Disney cartoons, and the movies R.E.D. (better than I expected), Easy A (cute, very funny in some places), and Megamind (cute, but nothing spectacular). Nope, I didn’t sleep at all. It’s 8:35am here in Dusseldorf and I’ve been awake for 19 hours. I’m hoping not to sleep in the airport, but I’m sure I’ll sleep on my next flight to Kyiv. And then there’s always the overnight train to the girls. :)