From Chicago to Istanbul

**Sorry for not posting yesterday! I had this post all ready to go and we lost our internet! It's a long story...one which I shall tell later! Also, I added a picture to my post about Katelyn and Josh and will add more pictures tomorrow!**

So here we are on the plane to Istanbul. Preparing for our longest flight....11 hours. We were on the NICEST plane!! It was an airbus 340 (Turkish Airlines). It had 2 seats, 4 seats, and 2 seats. Each seat had it's own TV screen and there were TONS of movies to choose from. We had booked our reservation sight unseen....so we were VERY thankful that the plane was so nice!!

We couldn't watch movies until the plane took off so we sat and talked and the kids played with toys. Laura was very nervous about flying over the ocean (she even hates driving over the Arkansas River bridge!!). Hearing all the flight attendant info about what to do if the cabin loses pressure and how your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device WASN'T helping her at all! So we prayed about it with her. She felt a little better...but it was still good that all our flying over the ocean happened after dark so she didn't really realize it!

Finally the flight took off and we were able to watch movies! YAY!! Our flight left around 10:00 pm, so I was hoping that everyone would sleep most of the flight. That *kind of* happened! The little kids settled down and watched Alvin and the Chipmunks and the middles picked out movies also. Laura and Benji were in 2 seats, Melissa and Garrett were in 2 seats, Annie and I were in 2 seats on one of the 4 seater rows, and Scott and Nate were in 2 seats on a 4 seater rows. After take off Annie moved to sit by herself in front of Melissa and Garrett & Nate moved to sit with me. It was so fun listening to Nate (with his headphones on) giggling as he watched the movie!!

Sometime during the flight Scott drifted off to sleep and stretched out on his row. Around midnight the littles started going to sleep. Garrett slept all night in a seat that was tilted back. He looked so uncomfortable...but he said he slept great! Annie stretched out in her 2 seat row and crashed! I mean, mouth-wide-open asleep! Nate stretched out in the other 3 seats of our 4 seater row. Melissa, Benji and Laura watched movies until about 2 or 3 am then went to sleep (each in a chair that was tilted back). I watched "Music and Lyrics" and then started "Eat, Pray, Love" (but never finished it...not that great of a movie!). It was really hard for me to sleep because I felt like I needed to keep watch over everybody. Garrett cried out with a bad dream, Annie almost rolled off several times...you know, that's just how moms are!

Oh! You want to know the OTHER reason we couldn't sleep?!? In front of us was a man and his wife. They seemed like they were just casually flying to Istanbul (her home country)....until the middle of the night. Then we realized they had a PUPPY they were taking home with them. How did we realize there was a puppy on the plane? First of all, it started to yip yip yip. Then they started taking PICTURES of it *with a flash*....*in the middle of the night*!!!! I'm not kidding. I kept thinking, "How do any of these pictures look any different? You're taking pictures of a dog that's ASLEEP!!" The thing that made it even crazier was the guy kept calling to the dog to get her to look (?). He'd say, "Gigi, Gigi...." over and over. It made me laugh because it reminded me of my sister and the noises she makes to get all the kids to look at the camera (yes, Kathy, I'm talking about you. And, yes, Lydia made those same noises at the airport as we were taking pictures. It made us all laugh!)

Anyway, around 4:00 I leaned my head over on Nate's stuffed animal and cat-napped for about an hour and a half. Praise the Lord, that was all I needed. I woke up feeling ok. Around 6:00 or 6:30 am everyone started waking up and they served us breakfast. Let me stop here and say the food on the plane was GREAT!! On this flight they served a pasta dish and a meat dish for dinner. Laura and Benji got the pasta dish and they said it was yummy. We got the meat dish and it was good, too. The kids were still really sleepy and not feeling really hungry so they didn't really eat breakfast. I kind of forced myself to because I knew I'd be hungry later.

Benji and Laura woke up feeling sick at their stomachs. The last 2 hours of the flight were pretty rough on them. They kept going back and forth to the bathroom thinking they were going to throw up. Scott sat with Benji and they looked at the map on the TV screen to get Benji's mind off feeling sick. The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful until the very end (around 8:30 or 9:00 am). As we were descending and getting ready to touch down Laura actually did get sick. Poor kiddo! Since we were landing she couldn't go to the bathroom so she actually had to use one of those "in-flight airsick" bags. Poor sweet girl!

We landed in Istanbul and there was a guide waiting to take all the people heading to Entebbe through the airport to find our gate. We were SO thankful for him because there is NO way we ever would have found our way through that airport! It was HUGE!!

As we were walking quickly to our gate (following our guide) we passed a Starbucks and I thought, "We can go back to that before we leave." But we kept getting farther and farther away from it....boo hoo. That was a "die-to-self" moment...because I really just wanted to have a pity party!

We got settled at our gate and Scott went to find a ticket counter to make sure we were ok with the boys boarding passes (remember that we didn't actually HAVE boarding passes for them!). I passed out snacks from my bag of goodies and then we all went to find a bathroom. As we finished we met Scott coming back from the ticket counter and he told us everything was FINE. Praise the Lord again!

We got back to our gate to see everyone going through security (yet again!) and getting on the plane. This time Scott took the boys and I took the girls through. It was much easier. Except at this checkpoint we got stopped because we had some tweezers (that you use for getting splinters out) in Laura's carry-on. Funny that we hadn't gotten stopped anywhere else. I didn't even know they were in the bag! I told them what they were and offered to not take them with us....but they let us go on with them anyway. Weird! Those things are SO sharp they could have inflicted SERIOUS pain on someone. I guess I looked harmless enough! :)

As we boarded the plane we were ALL speaking words of victory in the name of Jesus. Benji and Laura were very nervous about this flight because they still felt kind of sick and were afraid they were going to throw up on the plane. So down the walkway we all went ALL speaking out against Satan and giving Jesus the victory.

We all got settled on the back of the plane for what (to me) was the longest of our flights (even though it was only 6.5 hours).

Details about it tomorrow!!