We made it!

It's been over a week since we arrived back in Hunstville, Alabama! We flew out of Korea on Thursday Jan 22, at 6pm, and arrived in Huntsville on Thursday Jan 22, at 8pm! Only two hours of travel! Haha! Wouldn't that have been nice! Total travel time was actually 25 hours, but that doesn't include the hours of "awake time" we had since Caden decided to wake up at 4:45 am the day we left (which would have put us just over 30 hours of travel time, before arriving in Huntsville).

God saw some flaws in our planning and we truly think he knew Caden needed to wake us up early that day. It actually worked out quite well. Caden slept the entire 2 hour bus ride to the airport and we actually had to wake him up when we arrived!

At the airport we faced our next big challenge: getting all of our 7 suitcases, 6 carry on's, a stroller, a pack and play, and a car seat from the bus to the gate all while toting a toddler. God, again, provided for us! There was a bellman (or whatever you call them) waiting at the exact spot the bus unloaded us and he took care of it ALL!

The rest of the trip I will share in little "snippets" with the pictures below:

We arrived at the airport about 2.5 hours before our flight opened. We planned it this way hoping we would be the first in line to get our tickets when the flight opened and maybe get a bulkhead seat. So, for lunch we picnicked with some McDonald's on the benches by the Delta counter.

Our luggage... We had a lot of luggage (as you can see). Many of you are probably thinking we paid a pretty penny to get all these bags on the plane, but actually Delta allows 10 bag up to 100 lbs each (that's 1,000 pounds total!) for military members traveling on orders. Nice!

We decided to check our stroller under the plane and use a handy little strap to convert our rolling carry-on suitcase into a stroller by attaching the car seat! The best $12 we ever spent!

Once through security we found our gate and next to it was a play area for kids. This was just one of about 30 of these play areas situated throughout the airport. Korea is just so kid/baby friendly! The play areas were all very clean. Caden played here until John's tummy told him it was time for a snack...

We had some ice cream for a snack... and it was here that we think we lost Caden's little teddy bear that I bought for him when I was pregnant. It is so hard on a mommy to lose something with sentimental value... We realized the bear was missing as we were boarding the plane and I got permission to go run through the airport frantically searching for it, but returned empty handed...

At gate 113 (our gate) Caden spotted the little walk way things that are like flat escalators... he has an obsession with escalators lately so he spent the remaining 30 minutes or so before we boarded the plane riding on these. John rigged up the suitcase that he wanted to carry (but was too heavy for him) with some string so Caden thought he was hot stuff pulling his little suitcase around!

On the plane we were fortunate enough to get the bulkhead seats, and ones by the window at that! Caden stayed awake about the first two hours of the flight, and then he was spent! He was so tired that it took nothing more than his blanket and paci and he was out in minutes! He slept for about an hour, then woke up briefly trying to roll over, but found he was strapped in his car seat... so we decided to put a pallet on the floor under his seat and let him sleep there... and he did for 4 more hours! In the picture below you can see the little bulkhead area where he slept.

Here is is watching a video on Daddy's tray table (his wouldn't come up over the seat- one disadvantage of bulkheads).

After a 13.5 hour flight we arrived in Atlanta, quickly transitioned to a new plane to take us to Huntsville and an hour later (Caden slept the entire time) we arrived home!! After exiting the gate in Huntsville, Caden wandered over to the nearest bench in the deserted airport and climbed up... he was ready for sleep!

Here we are greeting my family (it took two trucks to get all our stuff home)...

We're very glad to be back!!