Getting to Africa

I spent all of last week getting ready to go. I started packing on Monday the 5th and finished Monday night the 12th – it only took a week and I only had to repack two or three times, LOL. Every suitcase is packed to the BRIM (as always). Travel light? What’s that?! Seriously, all of my clothes are in my little rolling carry-on. I have a lot of baby supplies, but the rest is donations – birthing kits and NICU supplies. So – we had one bag that ended up at 50 pounds, one at 65, and two at 69 and 71. Sadly, since September, United Airlines has raised their fees on overweight baggage from $25 to $50 if you are between 50 and 70 pounds (well, if the luggage is between 50 and 70 pounds – I have a bunch of kids who would LOVE to have me bring them for only $50 and who weigh between 50 and 70 pounds!) The good news is, they only charged me $100 for all the overage.

So -on Tuesday the day I left, Greg took Michael to school, then went to work. I took Alina to the orthodontist where she got her braces off, then I went to the chiropractor’s. I took care of as many household details as I could, had some last-minute packing, then went to my son Joshua’s 6th-grade class presentation of Macbeth. From there, I picked up the other kids from school, went home and finished the (VERY HEAVY) carry-ons, then headed to the airport in the bus. We got all checked in with help from all the kids – I’m sure the people in line behind us were VERY relieved to find out that not all 13 kids were coming with me (we have 15 at home, but 2 stayed at school). The flight was late – 2 ½ hours they told us – so I decided to spend a little more family time. We went to Taco Bell with everyone, then Greg dropped Alina and I off and headed home. Good thing we didn’t try to be gone longer! The flight ended up “only” being an hour and 15 minutes late and we could have missed it if we were gone a long time. As it was, we got right on and had no trouble getting to Chicago. Incredibly conveniently, our flight to London was only 5 gates away from where we got off (instead of several terminals away!) I talked to the kids and Greg one last time, then we got on the flight to hop across the pond. In another great stroke of luck, the people who were seated in our row decided to sit elsewhere (ha! just wait ’til we’re flying back with kids!), so Alina and I ended up with an entire row of 5 seats for just the two of us. Very nice.

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