Sheep Guarding Llama

As always it is very hard to figure out where one post should end and the next begin when you are dealing with things like “up all night” overnight flights and such.  We were in the air for three hours when midnight rolled around making it New Year’s Eve.  The girls managed to sleep for a good portion of the flight and watched shows for a good chunk of it, too.  Dominica could not sleep at all because it was so warm.  She was feeling awful the entire way.  Almost sick the whole time.

During the flight I managed to watch a lot of movies.  I watched enough movies that my eyes and ears were in pain from the close up screen and the cheap headphones.  I watched several movies that I have been wanting to see like Anchorman 2, Blades of Glory, Vacation and Kingsmen.  International flights are great for this and I get in nearly all of my desired movie watching by doing this.  It kind of works out.  It also works out great that Dominica watches completely different movies than I do and gets to see lots of films that I have no desire to have to sit through.  So it is a double bonus for me.  Liesl watched Transylvania twice and then watched Transylvania 2 twice.  Liesl sat in the middle and Luciana sat on the other end of the row beyond Liesl so I did not have good visibility into what shows she was choosing.

We had two meals served on our flight, both dinner.  One was very early on served late in the evening last night.  The other was towards the end of the flight today when it was a late lunch in our arriving time zone.  All of the food was excellent and they had food and drinks available “anytime” that we wanted. There were two chefs on board!  Other than the oppressive heat, everything was awesome on this flight.

We were surprised when we heard the captain say that we were landing in negative one temperatures and that we would be seeing some snow.  It never occurred to us that it would be snowing in Istanbul, it always seems like such a warm place.  But when we came in for the landing, there it was, everything was covered in snow and a good amount of snow coming down, too.

Every flight after Houston on this trip ended up having no gangway but instead we had to take buses to and from the planes out on the tarmac.  So landing in Istanbul meant that we had to walk down icy cold metal stairs outside with our six carry ons and two small children.  Luckily everyone had coats except for me.  Might was checked.  I was fine, though.  The wind was not so bad, but it was very cold.  Especially cold after having been in Panama and Nicaragua all summer!  This was a pretty big shock.

We got into the airport at Ataturk and learned that many flights had been delayed and cancelled due to the weather.  We looked at the board, saw a flight to Athens and ran to that one.  It was the wrong one, though.  Had our flight not been delayed, we would have missed it!  That was a close one.  We looked and looked at the boards trying to find our correct flight.  Eventually we found it.  It was delayed, and then cancelled.  Dominica had to scramble to cancel our hotel, our ground transportation in Athens and to move our Aegean flight from Athens to Chania until tomorrow evening.

We had no idea what to do.  Ataturk is a massive and very packed airport.  This is very much the crossroads of the world!  I have never been anywhere that was so completely cosmopolitan.  Just reading the flight boards was something.  Flights to so many cities and countries that I have never seen flights to before.  Istanbul is one of the world’s connection cities.  In the heart of everything.

We had to deal with a help line to find out what was happening with flights.  That took at least an hour.  The girls and I camped out while Dominica went through the line.  The line was crazy and erupted into a fight at one point.  A crowd gathered and people were filming.  I thought that it was probably Dominica until I realized that the fight was in Turkish.  Dominica managed to make friends with some people traveling home to Tehran in the line.  She got to hang out with them for a while.

We stopped by the luggage desk and made sure that our luggage was going on to Athens directly and that we did not need to pick it up or anything.  We are very concerned that this is going to cause our luggage to be lost.

Air Turkey got us tickets for a flight to Athens at noon tomorrow and sent us down to another level to talk to a hotel desk about getting accommodations for the night.  We went downstairs and got into the hotel line which stretch for about four hours.  We put in an hour or two in the line, mostly with Dominica waiting in line while I sat with the girls.  While we were waiting in this very long line a kind stranger came up and gave Liesl a sandwich for her and Luciana to share.  This worked out great as they were very hungry and after I pulled off the meat, they loved the sandwich.

Dominica was very worried that there would be no hotels or if there was that it would be so late that we would not get any sleep and that tomorrow would be just horrible.  So she called around and found the five star WOW Istanbul very nearby and booked us a room there.  We got out of line, grabbed a five Euro cab (they do not use Euros in Istanbul but they are common enough here) and got the hotel which turned out to be quite amazing.

The WOW Istanbul was just what we needed.  A gorgeous hotel that took care of everything.  We got a nice, big king room and decided to take it easy just getting room service for the night.  We did not have the energy to even go down to the restaurant to eat.  The food was very good and we managed to have a very authentic Turkish dinner, as far as hotel delivery can go, while in Istanbul.  We are so glad to be back to the world of good and healthy food.  Boy have we missed it.

It was off to sleep pretty quickly for us.  There was nothing for us to do and there was not enough time for us to get as much sleep as we really wanted.  We all had basically no sleep last night so just wanted to get to bed and pass out.

The room was pretty warm so we actually slept with the window open, even though it was snowing outside.  The room never got that cool, but it was comfortable.  Both girls slept in the bed with us.

This is it, our last day in the US and there is so much to do!  Lots of stuff is packed but a lot is not and, of course, there is a lot of things that just have to wait for the last second.  Everything is being charged this morning, there are four Fires to get charged, many camera batteries and such.

For food this morning it was “eat whatever was in the house.”  So for me that meant BBQ Quorn Chicken bites for breakfast.  We are cleaning out the fridge as best as we can.  At least all of the food in it is pretty healthy.

We ran up to the Grices in the Chrysler 200 that we had rented loaded with our luggage.  We parked it at the and Dominica and her dad set to getting everything loaded into it.  Emily and I took the Spark and ran to the Bay Area boxing place near their house to get the laptop, three iPads and more shipped out to day which should arrive to him on Saturday.  The laptop wasn’t quite ready to ship and I had to sit in the parking lot trying to get it ready at the last second.

After shipping out the stuff to dad, Emily and I ran to Sonic and got drinks to take back.  I texted Dominica and she asked for a drink and forgot to take the order for everyone else so we thought that no one wanted drinks but us.  So it was a small order, but fast.

Back to the house the car was pretty much ready to go.  I had enough time to finish my drink before we left.  This is it, six months away from the United States.  A huge move.

We left around five to make sure that we would beat traffic.  We made good time, thanks to the toll tag built into the rental car, and were up to the airport in well under two hours.  We even had time to stop and get gas and snacks before returning the car.

We dropped off the car, took some pictures and lugged our luggage to the shuttle to take us to the airport proper.    So much luggage.  We have four huge suitcases, all filled to the fifty pound limit and then six pieces of carry on – two big rollers and four backpacks.  Plus we have the one freebie grey bag that has the car seat and the coats in it.  Eleven pieces in all.  Way better than we have done in the past but far more than can fit into a normal car.  We can’t use a Yaris to get around like we did in Panama.  We must have a larger car.  The Chrysler 200 was filled to the brim.

Shuttle to the airport and our bags were checked and we were through security quick and easy.  We are getting very used to the international terminal at IAH by now.  We even know where to eat and when new restaurants arrive.

Once we were set up at the gate with plenty of time to kill I went and got us some food to eat while we waited.  I hit Aunt Cookies as everyone loves pretzels and they also sell the Nestle Tollhouse cookies that are Luciana’s favourites.  They did not have her favourite cookie this time, though.  So no luck there.

We had to wait about an hour and a half before it was time to board.  No issues, we were onto the plane and ready for our nearly half a day flight to Istanbul.  Our flight time was nine.

Our plane is a Boeing 777, our least favourite.  We like that there is a middle row of three seats for the girls and me to sit in as that is very logistically easy to manage but the 777 has no airflow and is extremely uncomfortable for anyone who needs air while flying, which many people do and Dominica especially really needs.  There is no way to control your own temperature so you are stuck in the general temperature of the airplane without any air movement which is tough for me, too.  And the plane was extra warm as well.  It was a rough combination.

We all put on some movies and called it a night.  The girls were not at all ready to sleep but we hope that they will fall asleep after not too long.  This is, by far, our longest flight ever and it is only the first leg.  This is going to be one really, really long trip.

Tuesday and our last full day in the United States for six months until we get back to New York in June!  So much to do.

The entire morning was spent packing.  Dominica ran out and did some early morning shopping for things that we were going to need just quickly on the island.  I’ve been working on feeding the kids and eating nothing but what is left in the house.

Dominica managed to get three donation bags of stuff together this morning!  It’s amazing how much to donate we keep finding.

The packing went on until fairly late.  It was after two when we headed out from the condo to run to the storage unit up on NASA Road One.  We had been hoping to have left more like ten this morning!  This messed up our planning a bit.

On the way to the storage unit Luciana had a bathroom emergency and we had to stop quickly.  Fortunately we were passing by Fry’s at the time and just swung in.  We had wanted to stop there anyway so this was not a tragic loss of time.  We wanted to get 64GB Micro SD cards for the Fire tablets that were arriving today. This stop ended up taking a full hour between taking some time to location the requisite cards, getting through checkout and then a massively long and drawn out process to do a price match that ended up backing up the store’s checkout capacity dramatically.  But, in the end, we got a great price on the exact cards that we need for our Fires that arrive today.  Liesl and Luciana have 40GB of storage on theirs and Dominica and I have 72GB on each of ours.  Far more than we are used to in our iPads which only one of which had 32GB and the rest had even less!

So now it was well after three thirty before we got to the storage unit.  At least the storage unit process did not take long and we found most of the things that we needed to find while we were in there.  The one big problematic thing that we have not managed to find is the power cord to the Netgear ReadyNAS unit as we had things that we really wanted to be doing with that and cannot because we cannot power it on.  So that is a project that hopefully we get to tackle sometime this summer.

From the storage unit we went to the Grices’ and arrived just as they were getting back to the house after having made a run to Sonic which was having a promotion because of the Houstons having won a game and so there were free drinks.

We hung out there for an hour or two before getting dinner which turned out to be from Sonic.  Sonic is making out well on us today.  Their free drink promotion got us all thinking about them, I guess.   Dominica and my Amazon Fires had arrived so we were busy setting those up as well.  The new Micro SD cards worked great and I managed to get a lot of games downloaded.  I am hoping that I will be able to use the Fire on the flight tomorrow and maybe knock out a game or two during the long time in the air.  I probably got a dozen games installed, mostly casual hidden object games, that are free from the Amazon Underground.

While dinner was being organized I watched the Disney Channel movie Pants on Fire which was surprisingly good.  It is on Netflix.  Silly, of course, but well done and I like the actor who stars in it.

After dinner Dominica and I decided to run up to Bush Intercontinental and rent a car for tomorrow that we can just drop off at the airport.  This will make the logistics tomorrow much easier for everyone.  We had both been independently thinking about renting a car for this for a while so when I suggested that we do it tonight she was ready to go and we just ran up and did it.

Emily came with us as we drove the Chevy Spark up to the airport.  That is a very long drive.  Traffic was heavy but not bad and we made good time.  Once at the airport it was rather a pain to find the car rental place and we had to do more than a full lap before managing to get there.  Now that we know where it is it will not be bad to use in the future, at least.  It is a completely separate complex on its own disconnected from the airport.

We thought that we were going to be able to rent from Enterprise but they were down to only exotic cars left and a Corvette was not going to meet our needs.  We shopped around but National was by far the best deal.  We got a Chrysler 200 full size for $70 as they were out of midsized cars.  Hertz was starting at $140 a night.  Dollar and Thifty at $82.

Dominica and Emily drove back in the Spark and I took the 200 back to the Grices’.  We were only there a few minutes. Dropped off Emily, gathered up the kids and drove back to the condo.  It was around ten when we got back.  Of course we forget to take the parking pass out of either the Spark or the Sequoia so we had to stop by the office and get another one.  When I did that a guy from North Pole, Alaska was just checking in.  We talked for a minute and he mentioned that he was originally from Ashtabula, Ohio.  Small world.

Luciana fell asleep in the car but Liesl was wide awake.  Both girls asked for sandwiches but Luciana fell asleep after just one bite.  Liesl ate two full sandwiches.  This morning, out of the blue, Liesl asked for a mayonnaise sandwich.  She has never had one before and never mentioned one.  But today she asked for one.  Very odd.  Tonight she had two more!  What a kid she is.  You never know what she is going to come up with.  Between the girls tonight and me this morning that finished off all of the bread that we have in the condo.  Small victories.

While packing Dominica found the Mallo Cups that we bought somewhere yesterday.  I rarely see them and the girls have never had them.  It will be a long time before there is a chance for that again so Liesl and I ate the pack tonight.  This is Liesl’s very first Mallo Cup.

MangoLassi broke the two million views in a single month mark tonight.  And it is only the twenty ninth day of the month!  This is a huge milestone for the community.

Liesl stayed up playing until just after midnight.  Dominica packed all evening.  Our bedroom was completely full of stuff needing to be packed so there was no way for us to go to bed until a lot of extra packing was completed or else we would have nowhere to sleep.

The video game downloads continue tonight for the last night.  We really did time this well and we are basically down to some “mop up” duty of the last straggler games that we are unlikely to ever get to but it is nice to have just for “completeness.”  We managed to run out of time as well as storage all at the same time.  It all worked out just about perfectly.  What a project that has been getting the gaming ready for us to travel to extensively.  The girls asked and asked for games while we were in Panama and Nicaragua and we have been promising them that we would have a real game system to “fix all of the problems” with things that we could not do all of this time that we really had to make this work during this window of opportunity.  But it really seems like it has and we are in great shape heading back to Europe this time.

I caught Rachel via Steam Alerts playing the goofy “Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective” that we got for her.  So silly, yet so fun.

Found out that dad has been playing “Blue Toad Murder Mystery Files” and is about halfway through the seasons now.  Dominica and I love that game.  Dad is way ahead of us now, we have had no time to be playing it.  It’s that perfect mix of casual but not trivial, funny but still has puzzles and a plot, fun and family friendly that makes you happy to play it.  It’s not the best game ever but it is very close to a style that I want to play more and more of.

Got my iPad Mini cleared and ready to ship to dad.  We are sending him that iPad to use as his from the girls is on its last leg (he has to have clips on it just to keep it from falling apart) as we have switched over to the lighter, smaller Fires.

Got to bed around one this morning.  Tomorrow is going to be a tough day.  Tons to be done and then going into epic amounts of travel.  We are going to be completely exhausted by the time we get onto the plane and then just the first leg of the flight is twelve hours!  This is, by far, going to be our toughest travel adventure ever.  But we get to say that in a single go we are flying from Texas, over the eastern US, over north Africa, all the way past Europe to the Asian border.  That’s something, right?

Monday.  The home stretch of preparing for the trip has begun.  We have mostly been ignoring the trip, up until now, trying not to think about all of the things that need to be done as there has not been a chance to have done them… until now.  Now the panic sets in and we are racing to get everything done between today, tomorrow and a little bit of time on Wednesday.

Dominica ran out to Target and Academy to do some shopping early this morning and then packed and prepared to pack for much of the morning.  Then in the very early afternoon we drove up to the Grices, dropped of Liesl and Luciana in exchange for Emily and set out running errands with Emily.  The first thing that we needed to do and by far our key objective for the day was to find me a replacement head strap for my CPAP facemask as mine is nearly completely dead and being in Greece with it is going to be a bit risky.

We started by going to a CPAP dealing in Clear Lake that I had called this morning and they said that they were unlikely to have the exact part that I needed but that they could identify it and call their warehouse in Stafford to see if they had it there, which they assumed that they would.  So since Clear Lake was close to League City, we started there.

They were right, they were able to identify the part and did not have it.  They called up to their warehouse for me and got confirmation from the tech there that I could go up and buy the headstrap there.  They had it available and even were able to give me the price.  It’s a long drive out to Stafford but it needed to be done today so we raced straight over there getting up there around three thirty.

We had a bit of an adventure.  The warehouse tried to pull a bait and switch on us, not realizing that I had an expired prescription and no matter what they did I could not buy a new face mask (straps can be sold in Texas, but masks cannot) and in an attempt to raise the price from $35 to $180 they ended up creating a situation where they were unable to sell me anything.  It was all fake and Dominica figured out the failed logic, and I figured out the bait and switch and they caved and sold us the part, as promised in the end.  It turns out that we bought the part from the same store that I got the CPAP from in 2010 or 2011.  So while it was many hours and a bit of a fight to finally get them to sell it to us we have what we need and are good for the journey.

We returned to Bay Area and hit the DXL store there and picked up two belts for me.  My old ones are all dead.

Back to the Grices around five thirty.  Dinner was Mexican tonight, those amazing tuna fish tacos that I had a few weeks ago that were so amazing.

We hung out at the house until around nine then came home for an evening of packing.  Lots to be done.  We have Francesca’s big Toyota Sequoia tonight that we are going to use tomorrow to take a big load to the storage unit.

I remembered to check Origin tonight to get Dragon Age II downloaded for Dominica and discovered that the Game of the Year Edition of Dragon Age Inquisition had finally released and was in their holiday sale!  So I grabbed that and got it downloading.  Dominica is going to be so excited.  Dragon Age Origin is her favourite video game of all time and now she has the entire trilogy to play.  I’m never going to get to use our new gaming system now.

Today is the closest thing that we have to a last day of relaxing in any way.  It is Sunday and Dominica’s mom’s birthday. So we are heading up to the Grices’ on the early side and spending the day there.  After today we have to be totally focused on getting ready to travel back to Europe.  The deadline is rapidly approaching.

We headed over to the Grices’ this morning and managed to be the first to wish Dominica’s mom a happy birthday (other than her dad, of course.)  It’s always a bit of a competition.

Shortly after arriving, Dominica, her dad and I went to the movie theatre to see Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens.  It was long and overall, I did not like it.  They both did.  Dominica thought that it was great.  I felt like it was an incredibly cheesy and predictable remake of the original movie combined with ridiculous and pointless character cameos.  It’s everything that I was worried that the new movie would be.  There were no surprises and nothing original.  It doesn’t feel like it carries the story forward but rather felt like a phoned-in half-assed money grab to exploit the fan boys.  It is better than the first three movies, of course, but that is an incredibly low bar.  I’m sure most people will like it and I must say that the new main star that they got is a very good actor and he did an excellent job but the movie itself isn’t true to the Star Wars universe and makes a mockery of the fans.  I’m saddened, but not surprised.

I had planned to avoid the movie completely but Liesl had decided that she wanted to go since she is seven and I had gone to see the opening day of Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi with my parents when I was seven.  But as we were walking out the door Liesl changed her mind because she did not want to give up time playing with her cousins.  So I was going to cancel but Dominica yelled at me so I went, but I think that I would have been happier skipping it.  I’m just so utterly disappointed.  So much potential and so much time to get this right and I’m not sure that it could have realistically been worse given the money, time and expectations.  Sure it technically could have had bad actors, made no sense and had bad effects but realistically the cast and effects were a given.  But the writing, directing and direction that they are going are basically as bad as I feel that they could be.  Maybe I am just jaded.

We got back and Emily and I did a Sonic run for food.  While we were gone Francesca baked the cake too.

Tonight we set up the new projector and gave it a trial run.  It works great.  Very easy to use.  We hooked it up to the gaming rig and projected it onto a side wall and Francesca spent the evening playing the point and click adventure game Alter Ego.