we made it

just a quick note to say we made it here to Dubai. (I wrote this last week and never finished it because I wanted to upload photos- I finally hooked up my computer and uploaded a few photos and now I have a whole other week of living here to report, but here is the old post- with pictures for those of you who don't like to read). 

total travel time: 26 hours (includes driving to/ from airports, layovers, waiting for bags etc.)

good points during that time: most of it was good. The kids were great on the plane rides (few moments of crankiness for Ivy), frustration for Asher when we had to stay buckled but were sitting on the tarmack for a good 30-45 minutes before take-off and he was hungry and the food was in the overhead bin. he survived. flying business class on Emirates airlines was wonderful. I could have stayed on that plane for a few more hours.

bad points during that travel time: "bad" is an understatement in reference to Asher's behavior getting off the airplane in Dubai. He was bad when we arrived in New York because he fell asleep 30 minutes before landing and wanted to keep sleeping. He didn't want to walk even a few steps and the Delta workers were less than helpful in offering ANY assistance. However, his actions in Dubai were even worse. I'm still re-playing the incident in my head and wondering what happened to my sweet boy as well as planning and devising ways of handling future "incidents". I don't want to talk about it anymore- too painful. It was worse than bad.

our days so far:

Thursday: arrived late to the apartment and tried to sleep

Friday: woke early with the kids, went to church (yes, church is on Friday), met lots of cool people, tons of young families(10 kids Asher's age in his primary class- mostly boys) heard multiple accents (Australian, South African, Canadian, American, British), fell asleep on the drive home from church, and went over to "Easter dinner" at one of the American families houses. Because of our naps we arrived just as most guests were leaving, but we enjoyed the food, and the ham which we will have difficulty finding again if we have any cravings (Muslims don't eat pork therefor it's difficult to find and expensive to purchase)

*

Saturday: John's 2nd day of the weekend, unfortunately we spent most of the day sleeping or wishing we were sleeping.

Sunday: John was back at work. Similar day to Saturday (ie sleep) although I did take the kids outside to swim and play on the playground for a few hours. Asher wanted to swim longer, but Ivy was close to exhaustion.

Monday: woke up early again (we've been doing too much of that and then taking long afternoon naps), played around with the kids in the apartment, John came home early and went with Asher to the US consolate to get my visa, then we went as a family to the Mall of the Emirates to do some grocery shopping and exchange one of my birthday presents. The kids finally went to bed on time and I'm hoping they are closer to being adjusted, although I'm awake in the middle of the night writing this because I woke up to Ivy crying and I can't fall back asleep.

Tuesday:  still woke up way too early but we were on time to see the morning showing of Horton with some other moms and kids (thankfully someone I met at church called to invite us).  It was nice to have something to keep us awake and the movie was pretty cute, although Ivy just wanted to crawl up and down the theater stairs.

the week since then: well, I would continue the play by play of our days, but unfortunately, I'm boring even myself.  The update is, we took about a week to adjust to the time change, but I think we did it.  The key was staying busy during our days.  Last week was a little easier since schools were out and we had some friends to play with, but we've done ok this week and we've checked to see about getting Asher in a preschool at least a couple days a week.  More to say- stay tuned.

*i took the Easter photos on actual Easter Sunday- just because it was something to do- I got the kids all dressed up, opened the blinds, used all the hotel blankets and had our own photo shoot. It was fun to pretend I was professional. I've got a few more cute ones if you're interested. Unfortunately, Asher of course would not let me touch his hair.