Rather than eat something gross like chicken nuggets on the way there, we decided to have Cafe Rio at the airport after checking in. We made good time driving and although I didn't check the clock, we were there ABOUT 2 hours early I would say. My husband got a cart and we loaded it with luggage, homeschool boxes, and car seats (imagine a Utah version of the Beverly Hillbillies) and carted our stuff over to check it all in. That took forever because it was an international flight and there was much checking of passports and whatnot, but then they informed us we had to pay the taxes for the lap-child on the Atlanta to Chile leg of our flight. No problem. The company will foot the bill. But then we found out that could take up to 30 minutes. Here is where the ABOUTness of my time sensitivity became a problem. So I took my kids over to some benches and played eye-spy forever while my husband sorted it all out. Then we rushed to security where we waited, waited, waited, then hurried and took our shoes, jackets, cell phones and noses (not really) off and walked through the magic gateway to the other side. At this point we realized we would be running to our gate and there was definitely not time for Cafe Rio.Hungry kids plus frustrated husband usually equals bad flight. But we ate peanuts and watched movies and made it to Atlanta where we road a shuttle to another gate and then enjoyed some Friday's burgers served by a waitress named Chiquita (awesome).
We had a few extra seats and a few extra minutes on the overnight flight to Santiago which made the trip much more comfortable. I was dreading the 9 1/2 hour overnight flight, but it actually wasn't bad. The kids watched movies and slowly dropped off to sleep without so much as a "Joseph hit me!"
Joseph, Paul, and Izzy ready for an all-night plane ride.
Mando making sure he doesn't have a double chin for the picture.
Neither Mando nor I could sleep much. I think we were too wound up from getting five kids through 2 airports in the last few hours. (Do you have any idea how many bathroom breaks that involves?) But I read a book and we watched a few movies and before we knew it we were being served egg-product sandwiches as the sun peaked over the horizon and shot blinding rays through small slits in the plane windows.
Becca doing her sassy walk down the aisle while we wait for take-off.
After we got off the plane in Santiago we went through the line for the travel visa and then the line to check our passports and then waited for our luggage and then went through a line to have our baggage scanned for illegal items (quite the process as you can imagine) and finally came outside to the crisp late-winter Chilean morning. Ahhhhh. We made it.
Wahoo for Chile! Driving around the farm after sleeping off some jet lag.Sadly as we were loading our stuff in the truck Mando noticed our box of reading material for the kids was rather light, but everything was so crowded and the kids were exhausted and the guys who came to pick us up were waiting and the baby needed to nurse - you get the picture - so we just left. We added it up and over $300 in books (and a 3DS game I brought for Paul's birthday) was stolen and/or lost. Sadly most of that stuff can't be replaced while we're here but we submitted a claim to the airline and hopefully we'll be reimbursed at least partially.
We'll know in ABOUT 2-4 weeks.
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