Flashback (Part II)

I posted a bit on the plane ... here's a short bit of my recollection shortly after we left Baltimore.

Wednesday 11:44pm (EST) You may have guessed, proved by the absence of a post on on Wednesday, that we were on our way to Turkey.

If you made that deduction, you were right. Gold star for you.

I am writing this from the plane on the way to Ramstein, the Base in Germany that will be our refueling point in our journey. From there we will head to Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey.

It’s still all quite surreal to me. I really cannot believe that we are now on our way to the Middle East and our new home. I really can’t fathom the fact that the people we love will be living seven hours behind us in time zones. I truly don’t think I have digested any of it yet. I’m not sure when it will sink in, but it hasn’t yet. I’m still in survival mode, attempting to simply make it there with our two babies and dog without losing my mind or any small pieces of it.

So to backtrack slightly ….

We woke up this morning and spent the day preparing for our 10pm flight which we are now on. I could go into all the details of preparations but quite honestly, I’m just too tired to do that. I will say that John & Becky were wonderful to put us up for two days. We were relieved that the storm which blew through the night before we arrived returned power to their house. (200,000 people were still without power when we arrived.) Becky took such good care of us. I even had the opportunity to go with her to a running store today that specializes in watching you walk and telling you exactly which shoe is the best for you. Hopefully my new purchase will help my feet continue to heal. I’ll also say that Becky had a fantastic yard for Scrubs and that her dog Annie and Scrubs got along amazing. They played together, laid together, and simply went on about their merry way in the house as if the other one did not exist. It was wonderful.

What I can also tell you right now is that these military flights are less than ideal. All these men and women headed out on deployments sure aren’t getting as nice of a send-off as I think they deserve. I don’t mean to be a complainer but I have never seen people packed in more closely than we are right now. We are in a row of four, occupying each seat in our row. The boys’ are now asleep in their car seats in the two middle seats, but their little legs can’t even fit in the space they have. Poor little guys have their legs up on the tray tables in front of them to fit! Ugh! It is unbelievably crammed. One guy voiced his complaint that this was not very luxurious, and the attendant answered his whining about no TVs and lack of leg room by bringing him a little kids’ activity bag. I guess that’ll show him.

That aside, the news of the day is that Scrubs is on the flight! We are on the flight, and thanks to our new friend Ryan, (I met his wife online a few months ago through our mutual friend Amy. Sarah and her son William are preparing to join her husband in a few weeks), so are we. We abused Ryan to the full extent by eliciting help in getting on the plane. Thank goodness he was there to help us carry on our six carry-on bags, stroller, carseats, and two boys. I’d like to say that next time we will pack lighter, but truly, I am just not sure what we could leave behind. We need enough diapers for the hours we’ll be gone. We need a change of clothes for us and the boys. We need all our important documents and some food. There just really isn’t much we could not bring. But somehow, we have to try to pack even lighter the next time we do this. Ryan willingly jumped in when we removed Elijah from the stroller while in line for security, and due to the excess weight we had loaded onto the stroller’s handles, it flipped backward with Isaac inside it. Not a pretty sight.

All right, enough about our trip. I will be updating periodically throughout the next hours and nearly entire day – sharing snippets of our journey. I’m not sure when I’ll get to post this blog. Sometime in the next few days I hope.

We are due in to Incirlik Air Force Base at 7pm tomorrow evening. That’s Thursday. And that’s noon Eastern Standard Time. For now, I’m going to enjoy whatever hot meal they are bringing me and pray that my boys sleep all seven hours of our trip to Germany.

Maybe I’ll even try to sleep a bit myself.