Ready or not...here we come

Steve left for Korea the day after we arrived back in AZ. He had to take the Suburban and process it in so that it could be shipped. Which meant that I would be traveling 15 hours by myself with 8 kids and 15 pieces of luggage. All would have been fine and was, in fact, going fine until the night or maybe I should say the morning before we were leaving. Out of the 14 of us who were staying in the house 6 of us woke up throwing up...including ME! We were all clamoring for 2 toilets so I set most of the kids up with buckets that they could carry around with them.

I wasn't feeling much better the day we left but the kids were feeling better. We got to the airport in PHX. and were about to board our Southwest flight when they asked us to step back because they had just changed the gates on us. There had been one of the Valley's famous monsoon thunder storms and a bunch of flights had been diverted and were now returning. We ended up delayed for 1.5 hours. I kept telling them that I had an international flight that we were going to miss and the agent (who is lucky to be alive at the present time) said 'So? What are you going to do about it?' I was sick, fighting the urge to hurl and dealing with 8 kids! I wanted to deck him.

We got to LAX and I knew that it was going to take a miracle for us to collect our bags and make the flight. I pushed my way through the mad passengers who had lost luggage and told some lady behind the counter that I had been delayed in PHX, had 8 kids, luggage to collect, I was going to miss my international flight and if I didn't get any help we were going to set up camp in their office for the next month. I asked her to call Asiana Airlines and tell them that there were 9 of us, we were delayed and were on our way to them. I had grabbed a Skycap and was pulling bags off the belt as he was throwing them onto an enormous rolling cart. We had to RUN, yes run a mile to the international terminal because we had just missed the inter-terminal bus. Ok, this was like something out of the movie 'Home Alone' where they are all running through the airport trying to catch their flight. The Skycap was running with our heaping cart (this thing was massive and heaped high) and there were 9 of us 'chasing' him. We literally ran it. I was at the end of the trail of kids, to make sure that nobody got left behind, pushing a double stroller with a backpack on my back and a carry-on with all of our important documents in it. We made it to Asiana and had 3 people escort us through everything. We cut to the front of the lines where ever we went. They hurried us up to the plane and escorted us on and helped us get the out carry-ons stowed. It was now 12:45am and we were all exhausted. By the time the plane was airborne Ethan and Jacob were sprawled across their tray-tables...asleep. I was so sick I didn't even think to get my camera. :-(

We took a 2 hour bus ride to Songtan where someone from the Branch was there to help us get to our apartment. We arrived to find that the keyless entry for the door to the apt. had malfunctioned and we ended up waiting for almost an hour for someone to come and rip the thing off the door and replace it. Our shipment had been delivered about a week prior to our arrival so we walked into a sea of boxes. Let the unpacking begin...after we rest, of course.