Bad hair day and other tales

A few of you know that we've made it safely across the pond a few days ago. The trip was quite long. Kids handled it relatively well though. Aside from Ivor's vomit episode on the flight from Frankfurt I suppose. :) We flew on the medium sized plane from Zagreb to Frankfurt, jumbo sized plane from Frankfurt to Washington D.C. , and small little airplane from Washington D.C. to Birmingham. Sounds like a Goldilocks and the three bears story, doesn't it? :) However, the little, 50 seat airplane was definitely not our favorite. There was hardly any room to even get in, but we somehow managed.

At the Frankfurt airport, where we had a three hour layover, we've learned the value of a soda. Since liquids are no longer allowed as carry-ons, we didn't have anything with us as we normally would, so Chris went to look for a beverage. He had a few dollars on him. He managed to use American currency to buy a drink for the unbelievable sum of -- $4.20 for a half a liter drink! Can you say rip off?He got Euro as change. I suppose that will come in handy at some later time.

The weather was beautiful the whole way. A little bit of rain that we started out with turned into sky full of sunshine and kids enjoyed peering out. Neither of the kids wanted to sleep of course. They probably figured that sleeping would make things too easy on their parents. They had to play the part. So we told stories, amused them, played card games and had tea with Disney princesses. And finally it was time to land at Washington D.C. 10 minutes to landing I sat next to Ivor and talked to him. 6 minutes to landing I looked over and he was sound asleep. See the problem there? It was a 9 hour flight which sounds like enough time for a little nap but he waited until it was time to land. Unfortunately, he had to be woken up and the fun began. We had an hour and 50 minutes to clear the immigration, customs, claim and recheck our baggage and catch our connecting flight. All with two excessively sleepy kids in tow. Namely it was their exact bedtime by the Croatian clock, and good and obedient kids that they are, they just wanted to sleep.

Anyway, we joined the massive crowd all gathered to pass the passport control. That seemed to drag on forever. We then claimed our 4 large bags. We traveled with 5 carry-ons (2 laptops, one food bag and two kid entertainment bags) as well as 4 jackets (it's cold in Croatia folks). Add two kids to the mess and you've got yourself quite a pile. Fortunately, we were able to pile everything on two carts. Kids were pleased to sit atop the bags and go for a ride. Then we gave a courteous nod to the customs officer. He was kind enough to just let us through. After checking the bags we proceeded to look for our flight. After a long walk around we managed to find the departure gate for our next flight with a few minutes to spare. Once we boarded, the kids went back to sleep. Mia slept on top of me as I tried to make her nap as comfortable as possible. My back was hurting and my arms went numb but we lived through it. Grandpa and aunt Ann Marie waited to greet us at the Birmingham airport.

We rested the next day. Kids had some catching up on sleep to do. The next day was Halloween so as the day wore on we got ready for a fun trick-or-treating evening. We joined Ivor's daycare buddy Brady and the fun began. Brady's dad got a wagon full of hay so we enjoyed a hayride on a mild Alabama evening. It was great. The kids had a lot of fun and got some candy. They were exhausted but happy. Sorry, the pictures are still in the camera and it's already getting late for me to get them downloaded. I'll try to do that in the next few days. I do have to go to work in the morning and will need to go get some sleep soon.

Yes, I've been working regular business hours. It's been weird to have to get up in the morning to go to the office. It's been well over a year since I've had to do that. It was great to catch up with everyone again though. I am seeing many fun lunch dates in the near future catching up with friends.

Also, on Friday, a new member joined the Phillips clan. Evelyn Marie (aka Evie), was born Friday morning to Chris' brother Michael and his wife. Cute little one too. Yes, I'll have pictures but not yet.

You know, writing all this, it sure seems like we've already had an eventful stay in the US.

That finally brings me to the event that describes the title of this post -- the bad hair day which happened on Saturday. Our perfect looking children were not given their haircuts prior to the trip. We really tried but it simply didn't happen. So Saturday we figured we'd take them to get their haircuts at a local Hoover hair salon. Well, our intentions were good but the results were awful. Both their haircuts look bad. I had to tell you all that so if the kids don't look perfectly adorable in the pictures like they normally do, you'll know that we're not to blame. We tried explaining what we wanted to the hairstylists there but without luck. Grandma tried to comfort us by saying that it wasn't that bad. Yes, it certainly could have been worse but we know that it should have been so much better. Anyway, I am thinking that we'll be visiting our regular hair stylists as soon as we're back. We were appalled at the price too. It cost us $31 for two haircuts (that we didn't like) and we typically pay about $10. I'll just have to get over it though. I think that I probably would have handled it better if it was me that met with the hair mishap and not the kids.

Got to go to bed now. I have to get up waaaay early tomorrow morning. Oh, the cruelty...