Home again, home again jiggity jog

As our son loves to say every time we walk in the door we are 'home again, jiggety jog'. The trip was uneventful - best kind I guess. We woke up early for our flight to Amsterdam - well, Kurt, Serik and Sasha had to wake up. I, unfortunately, did not sleep at all. Nice way to start the 24 hour trip. We made it to the Almaty airport with plenty of time to spare and then proceeded to wait at the counter for 40 minutes (yes, we were being helped). I kept asking if there was a problem? No. You have the baby's lap ticket? Yes. Okay then - finally all checked in. Tried to upgrade with our abundance of miles but the head lady said, 'no we can not upgrade children'. Well that's news to me and probably to KLM. Then it was 'you have a special meal so we can't'. I said I'll eat my special meal from economy class. Well then we'll be one short - ' 'no', I said, 'they can have my business class meal'. No luck - obviously.

So we're settled snug in our economy class seats when said 'biddy' comes on the plane to tell us that the baby doesn't have a ticket. What?! I sure hope she does because we gave the credit card number, her name was in the reservation. Something apparently happened when we switched from the 23rd to the 21st and Kurt ended up having to get off the plane and re-buy a new lap ticket. Which as it turns out was 2/8 the cost of the original.

The plane ride wasn't bad as the lovely KLM ladies (the Dutch ones on the plane) maneuvered things so we could have our own row. Serik watched movies and napped for a couple of hours. Sasha not so much.

We ran around the Amsterdam airport, tried to get Sasha and Serik to nap in the World Club Lounge - nope, in the Baby Lounge complete with mosquito netting - nope again. Finally gave up and had their picture taken with Santa and his little elf (courtesy of American Express).

On to Mpls.

The plane was 2-4-2 and we had a 2 and an isle. Serik was asleep within the first hour (before we even had the in-flight entertainment system turned on) and he slept the whole way - had to wake him up a half hour before we landed. Sasha slept about 6-6 1/2 hours of the almost 9 hour flight. We landed on time and had family and friends there to meet us (thanks Nana, Missy, Russ, Lissa, Isaac, Lisa, Bob, Katie, Alan, Davey, Amanda, Dave and Isabel).

The house feels fabulous. Nana and Lisa had it cleaned and stocked and all decorated for Christmas.

Once home Sasha fell asleep from 8:30-9:30 p.m. and again at 10:30-5:30. Serik fell asleep at 11 and was up at 2 a.m. - fun. I've been on duty since then and just got her down for a nap. Serik is currently watching Curious George in a bit of a daze - hoping to get him down momentarily so I can follow suit. Happy Holidays to all and will post more later - including pics from our last day in Almaty.