This was our READY TO GO HOME DAY! We all got up and made it through one last breakfast buffet. No one wanted to eat anything today. I did remember to bring my camera and get a few pictures though.
There was a big stage at this end of the dining room. We couldn't figure out what it was used for though. Just a display, I guess. S is looking towards it in this picture.
Josh usually fed E in her stroller while I fed G in hers and we tried to keep S in between us. I spent a lot of the time at breakfasts running back and forth from the table to the buffet getting plates for all the littles and one for myself. It was crazy.
The lobby had this massive wood carving. It was amazing!
This is the lobby walking from the dining room back towards the elevators.
Anyone else notice the horse theme here?
I ran outside with G to grab a few shots of the outside of the hotel. Josh took the other kids to get some more money exchanged so we could pay our guide and driver.
You have to pay to park in the little tiny parking lot outside the hotel. Our driver had to pay every time he came to pick us up even though he was just picking us up and not staying for any length of time. So stupid.
After I got back upstairs I got the fun job of packing everything up for the last time. We were all out of clean clothes by this point and didn't want to pay for another laundry service so I sorted through the dirty clothes bag and found the least stinkiest things for everyone to wear. Gross doesn't even cover that. Oh, the fun things the Mommy gets to do! I guess I actually did this the night before because everyone was dressed before we went down to breakfast. I did have to go through and sort all the dirty stuff to pack it away though and get everyone an extra set of clothes to take on the plane. Josh kept everyone in one room while I packed in the other. G screamed and screamed the entire time because I had left her. :( I'm a pro at this now though and it didn't take me long to get us all packed up. I even managed to make several PB sandwiches for the kids to take on the plane in case the meals were anything like last time. I took a few pictures of the hotel room and view before I packed up my camera.
There was a huge park right across the street from the hotel room. We wanted to take the kids on a walk over there but were too chicken to cross all those lanes of traffic with our crew. It doesn't look too busy right now but it was usually VERY busy.
Right next to the park is a big sports complex. The night before there was some kind of tournament or something going on and the place was crazy packed with people. So loud too!
Here is a shot of "my" room. S snuck away and helped me pack for a little bit.
And the bathroom.
Josh's room was exactly the same, just a mirror image.
After I finished packing we had a few hours to spare and we really needed some more water. So we walked down to a convenience store and bought a few bottles. The kids ate a light lunch of leftover yucky pizza from the night before. They picked everything off and basically had pizza crust for lunch. I wanted to at least get something into the little kids before we left.
We met our guide downstairs and paid her and the driver and then we were off to the airport! Hallelujah!!!!!
We got through the airport OK. After checking all our bags and getting through security we found the gate listed on our tickets. Once we got there we found out it had changed. To a gate about a mile away. Ugh! We walked forever to the gate only to find out it had changed again and was about 3 gates back. GRRRRRR!! Get me out of China already! We finally found the gate and made sure it was the right one. M and I went to use the restroom and then Josh took the boys. He also went in search of some water for us. We were all parched on the flight over here since it's so flipping long and we drank our water pretty quickly. I was not going to let that happen again. We finally found some at a vending machine and bought the four it had. They finally started boarding and once we made it past the ticket agent there was another security checkpoint. They had to search our bags AGAIN and throw away all our water AGAIN. Even the babies' stuff! SO FREAKING MAD! There wasn't even a place to throw it away. No trash can or anything. Some of the cups we had to dump out since they were sippy cups. So they made us wait for them to get somewhere to throw it away. Josh was so angry he was seriously close to dumping it on the floor or maybe pouring it over the security guards' heads at this point. Don't think that would have gone over well though. . .
We finally got on the plane. We had two rows of four seats at the very back of the plane. It was a double decker plane too. The ride was SO turbulent and scary. The big kids all sat in the back row and Josh and I and all the babies sat in front of them. The big kids played on the iPads and DS's the whole time and did very well. The little kids did OK. I had to hold G the whole which sucked majorly. E had 2 major meltdowns - one at the very beginning of the flight where everyone stood up and turned around to see her screaming and watch us. I finally yelled to them, "Yes, she's crying! It's great, isn't it?!" and waved to everyone staring. SO DONE WITH CHINESE PEOPLE!!!!!!!! E watched TV for a little bit but then it died and it was all downhill from there. There are no outlets on a freaking 11 hour flight? What stupid person designed this airplane?! The plane over to China had outlets so I figured this one would too. Same airlines and all.
E settled down finally and fell asleep for a little while. S was awake for quite a bit of the flight but finally fell asleep for the last 4 hours or so. G napped on and off the entire time. The food was AWFUL, as expected, but the little girls ate well. Our travel agent reserved a baby meal for us because of G being a lap child ticket. Guess what the baby meal is? A tray with a quart of milk and two tiny little baby food jars. What the crap am I supposed to do with a quart of milk, people? Seriously. What child drinks and entire quart? I seriously laughed out loud when she handed me the tray. We never even opened the milk since neither girl will drink it cold. The baby food was a fruit mixture and a meat and vegetable mixture. You're probably thinking something like chicken and vegetables, right? Uh no. Fish paste and corn. Yeah. I didn't open that one. I tried to give G the fruit one but she wasn't having anything to do with that and went right for my tray of actual food. Haha. Once E woke up she snarfed down the baby food though. I had told Josh not to open the "meat" one as it would likely make us all barf but I guess he didn't hear me because a few minutes later I see him gagging at the end of the row and E is screaming. Hahaha! She had finished off the fruit pretty quickly and he thought the other jar was more of the same. He gave her one spoonful and she spit it back at him. That's what made him gag. And she got it all over her shirt too so she smelled a little fishy for the rest of the trip. Nice. Luckily I had made the PB sandwiches before we left so no one was too hungry when we finally landed in San Francisco. We had two meals on the plane and neither were very good. We did get another quart of milk with our second meal though. HA!
We landed a little late so we were worried about our connection to DFW. We got off the plane (and sang a chorus of "Hallelujah!"), made it through immigration fairly quickly (thank heavens for America and English speaking people!), and found our bags. We had to check our bags again but that was a quick process. I had to get a boarding pass for me since the agent in China gave everyone boarding passes through to DFW except me. (WHY?!) Then we had to go through security again. I was just happy to be able to communicate with the security people and understand exactly what they wanted of me that I didn't really care! We made it through security fairly quickly and without problem and then on to our gate with about 10 minutes to spare. We immediately got the iPads plugged in for a little bit and the little TV too. We also got some food into everyone since breakfast on the plane was so disgusting. SO gross. I'm not even sure it was actual food. I was desperate for some water and some fresh vegetables. I found a chicken veggie wrap and it was SO good. We also got water for everyone and no one took it away from us!
While we were in the airport E walked around and tried to climb on every lap of the people sitting there waiting. They thought it was super cute but it's just really sad. We wanted her to run around though so we kept catching her before she could climb up and tried to redirect her. That only made her mad though.
We got on the plane to DFW - the very last rows again - and almost everyone fell asleep pretty quickly.
By this point it was about 4 am Beijing time and we were all exhausted. I couldn't really sleep very well since I had to hold G but I dozed off here and there.
This was what I was really waiting for. Hello, old friend. How I've missed you. Too bad they don't serve Mountain Dew on the flights. I might have broken down and cried tears of joy! (Sorry for the blurry iPhone shot)
Made it into DFW around 9 pm Dallas time. We all got off the plane, got a potty break for everyone, got our luggage and couldn't remember the name of the parking place we had used for the suburban! We spent some time looking for it on the internet (with working phones again - yay!) After about 15 minutes we finally found it and called them. They said they would send a shuttle right over. We made our way outside and, thankfully, the van was already there for someone else so we didn't have to wait long. Got everything and everyone loaded onto the van. We're almost there!
We found the suburban and unlocked it to find that the battery was dead. We had the van driver give us a jump and we heard something pop. We didn't think much of it until we got going and turned the air conditioner on. It was blowing super hot on the driver's side and cool everywhere else. We tried turning it on and off but didn't want to risk turning the car on and off after just getting the jump and we couldn't get the hot to stop so we had to drive with the windows down. At least it was nighttime and not as hot as it could have been! The little girls were FREAKING out about the carseats and everyone was starving by this point. We made a stop at Whataburger and calmed most of the people down. But then they started freaking out because it was so loud with the windows down on the freeway. Will this ever end?! Most of the kids fell asleep eventually though.
We got to Lucas and had to stop at the grocery store. I went in alone and left Josh in the car with most of the children sleeping. I came out and realized we didn't have any room for groceries anywhere so everyone had some piled on their laps - more freaking out ensued. I had to hold the three jugs of milk on my lap but at least it was nice and cool!
Our garage door openers wouldn't work when we got home. Seriously?! Luckily we have a keypad on the outside and we were able to open it. We finally got everything inside and changed some diapers and sent the big kids to bed. Josh and I stayed up with the little girls who had slept most of the flights so weren't ready to go to bed. The little girls finally fell asleep around 4 or 5 so Josh and I crashed too. Everyone woke up around 10:00 am.
Now our new life really begins!
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