Travel

I have tried to post this particular post 3 times so here is hoping it works correctly this time

There are thousands of post out there that tell you the perfect way to travel with ease when you have children,  This is not one of those posts.  That being said we know that we are a little crazy and that traveling with our family may be a challenge, especially since this would last over 24 hours.  All in all the children did pretty amazing.  We only lost one child for about 3 minutes, one boarding pass for about the same 3 minutes, and only had one child get so hot they had to sit down with their head in a throw up bag with the hopes they would not throw up or pass out.  Trust me it really was a great traveling day.  Here are the details.

The Tiny Plane

We began our day with a 2 1/2 hour drive from our home to Mason City, Iowa.  We had tickets to fly in an 8 passenger plane from there to Chicago.  We have 8 passengers so we basically chartered our own private plane for the family to get to Chicago.  It was an interesting experience.   The same lady that checked us in had to weigh each of our bags, weigh each of us, and then they inspected each of our bags by hand.   We then walked 15 feet over to go through the TSA check, which was surprisingly thorough.  Then the check in lady came back and took all our carry on luggage to the plane for us, walked us out to the plane, and then put on a bright vest and used traffic control sticks and signaled the plane onto the runway.

We all had fun watching the world go bye with takeoff.  The kids did take a little time to play on the tablets in the middle but the time went by quickly as we reached Chicago and prepared to land, which was an adventure all in itself with a tiny plane and you can watch the pilots.  A lot better than driving to Chicago!

To be honest I was most worried about the Chicago airport.  I have had experiences there that resulted in hours of lines and changing gates a few times.  I am so grateful this was not our experience.  We did have to haul all the luggage from our 1st flight to check into our international flight which was a challenge.  Check in was a short line and went smooth.  Even the security line was not very long. We only waited about min before we were up front.  If I was behind us I would have avoided our line for a little while.  We were slow and looked crazy and this is the moment that everything went sideways for about 5 minutes.  Keagan said he felt really hot and needed to throw up ( he was super dehydrated and you can't take water through security ahhhhh)  So... when he got through he sat on the other side with his head down and a throw up bag.  At about this same moment Steven got though security and he misplaced his boarding pass,  WHAT!!!  And again at the same time Jackson gets through security and wants to go find a bathroom, He tells his Dad (who is still looking for his boarding pass and doesn't hear a word he says).  Miranda noticed Jackson walking away but couldn't get his attention and had Kaden in her hands.  It was just one of those crazy messed up moments that everything goes wrong at the same time.  Thankfully it only lasted about 5 minutes.  Jackson came back quickly, we got some food and water in Keagan and the panic moment was over.  whew!

The Huge Plane

The international flight did not dissapoint the kids with with their  personal entertainment screen for each of them they quickley explored the game and movies and played and watched a fair bit.  After dinner we made the mturn it aff and try and sleep.  Most of them with no big fuss.  It was mostly smooth sailing from here.  We landed in Amsterdam, switched to a different flight, slept most of the flight to Madrid.  We Made it.