Sunday, September 30, 2001

What a whirlwind day! We got up at the crack of dawn and finished (okay, started) our packing. We finished at 4pm, without a minute to spare, and headed to Susan’s house. Susan graciously volunteered to take us to the airport so we wouldn’t have to pay to park our car for 10 days. We arrived at the airport and said our good-byes. With no curbside check-in we slowly made our way through the ticket counter line. Everyone was incredibly nice and the added security wasn’t nearly as bothersome as I thought it might be. When we got to the gate the plane was already there and the boys were able to look at it through the window. You should have seen the excitement! They sounded like Tattoo on Fantasy Island “Da Plane Da Plane”. They started boarding the plane shortly after we arrived so there was no waiting. The only “glitch” was the fact that Virgin Atlantic doesn’t allow the use of child carseats …… so, we schlepped 3 carseats for nothing. On the surface that doesn’t sound too bad but just try to picture: 3 children under the age of 3, 2 strollers, 3 carseats, 4 carry-on bags and 3 adults! Now you understand our frustration! We were given the option to use airline child seats but both boys wouldn’t have been able to sit at the window, plus they weren’t designed to encourage sleep so we decided not to use them. The cool thing was the special seatbelt that they had for Andrew who was sitting in my lap. It had a sewn loop that hooked onto my lap belt and then went around his waist like an adult lap belt. We had reserved bulkhead seats which has bassinet access but the bassinet was basically useless. It was little more than a plastic changing table AND every time the captain put on the seatbelt sign you had to take the baby out. I had to wake Andrew up once and decided having a free lap was NOT worth it so he slept on my chest until they woke us up at 6am for breakfast.

All in all the boys did great. The first 2 hours were pretty brutal for me because all 3 boys wanted mommy! At one point (during dinner of course) the turbulence got really rough. Nathan calmly asked me to make it stop. When I explained that it was just the plane moving about he slapped the window and said “Bad plane – plane go time out!” It was absolutely hysterical! They slept pretty good and since the plane wasn’t crowded we were able to stretch out a little allowing the adults to get a little sleep as well. It wasn’t restful sleep but some was better than none. Carter was slightly less than happy that the plane ride was over but he quickly got over that when he saw the big van that came and picked us up. To my surprise we were able to fit Poppy, daddy, me and the boys plus all of our luggage into one van.