So let me bring you up to speed...
We left our hotel in Guangzhou around 7:00 am. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to check luggage and wait for our now delayed flight. :-) It was a short flight to Shanghai, about 2 hours, and Audrey did fairly well. There were a few moments where she was crabby and crying but it was short lived.
Once we got to Shanghai, we collected our bags, checked into our international flight, then made our way to the first class lounge to waste away several hours until our flight left. This actually wasn't so bad. The lounge is nice. I had several cucumber sandwiches for free. There were drinks, food, a chef making some kind of noodle dish, candy, etc. All for free! So we loaded up and let Audrey run around and stretch her legs, burn off some steam for the big flight.
We had been praying about her being calm and quiet on the ride home. And I feel the Lord answered that prayer by moving our hearts to decide to use some pharmaceutical supplement after all! Ha ha ha! So we got that on board, and then boarded the plane!
And can I just say - international first class is N I C E!! Wow. I'm not sure I can go back to coach. Ever. I am so glad we decided to cash in all our miles for this luxury.
This was Jason and Audrey right before we took off. That whole area is just for Jason! Each area took up about 4 airplane windows. It was huge. Tons of leg room, arm room, head room. Lots of room. Shortly after I snapped this picture, Audrey started throwing a fit because she didn't want to sit in Jason's lap anymore, she wanted to sit on my lap. We had already started taxiing but we quickly switched her. She then fell asleep in my arms as we took off.
She stayed asleep through dinner (appetizer, salad, steak with a bernaise sauce - the nice flight attendants pulled out my huge lap tray for me, laid napkins out so it was like a tablecloth, served me my food and even cut my steak for me since one arm was holding Audrey ;-) Not kidding. Great service.
After dinner, I laid out my chair and slept a little with Audrey next to me. The chairs lay flat and they provide a pad to be a pseudo mattress, two blankets, an eye mask, even pajamas! Oh it's heavenly. At first I thought it was a shame we had to buy an extra seat because she's over 2, but we ended up putting her in her own seat for parts of the flight.
We had these two middle seats next to each other and the seat along the window. In the picture above, Jason is relaxing watching his own personal video monitor using his Bose noise canceling headphones (also provided by the airline). And Audrey is stretched out, in dream land ;-)
She slept for about five hours. She woke up at that point cranky. And I was cranky. I was very tired and really wanted to sleep. Everyone else was asleep. So, I took her in the bathroom for about 15 minutes for a diaper change, some warm milk in a bottle and then when she still wasn't satisfied, I let her scream and cry for a bit because there was nothing I could do. When she was done, she went back to sleep and slept for another six hours.
This photo was snapped about ten minutes before she woke up. She slept so well I was able to sleep almost the same amount of time. When she awoke, she had a little breakfast and then we were landing in Chicago! I think I could have kissed each and every crew member as we walked off and walked on American soil!! (Or American carpet ;-) At this moment, Audrey officially became a United States citizen. We breezed through customs, picked up our luggage and re-checked it, then made our way to the Admirals' Club to wait the few hours until our connection to DFW left.
Again the flight to DFW was fairly uneventful. Audrey fell asleep on take off and woke up a few minutes before we landed. Oh my goodness. Were we glad to land and get off that plane!! Here is a video my Dad took of our reunion with the girls and their first meeting of Audrey face to face. We're looking a little haggard but we were oh so happy to be H O M E!!!
