Our trip home from Paris was going to be a long one and we knew that it wasn't going to be easy, but little did we know what we had in store for us when we boarded our plane from Paris to London.
That was the first leg of our three-stage trip home. The short flight across the channel was uneventful. Heathrow Airport had its customary inconveniences, but before long, we were safe and sound in our comfy hotel room. We had a nice dinner and then decided to get some sleep in preparation for an early morning flight to Houston.
Stage two of our long trip home began where it left off; hectic and harried Heathrow Airport. Getting through security lines can be a test of anyone's patience. With restless twins who somehow sense they will be couped up on a plane for the next 11 hours, security lines are down right difficult. Having unsimpathetic security screeners doesn't help matters much either. What a circus act it is to take off four sets of shoes, fold up the stroller and place it on the belt, keep an eye on the bag that is pulled off the line for a more thorough inspection and make sure everything goes through the x-ray scanner, even pacies and puppies which the boys were reluctant to give up! By this time, the boys were starting to fall apart and I realized that I had to find some breakfast before we left. I found a little place that had coffee and breakfast sandwiches and Matt went to see if the plane was boarding. I decided to have our sandwiches warmed. But before they were done, Matt came running back to tell me that they had made the last call for our flight. Not wanting to leave breakfast behind, I told the cashier that we needed our sandwiches NOW and we had to run to catch our flight.
Lucky break! A kindhearted flight attend who realized we were traveling with twins relocated us to an empty row in a quiet section of the plane just behind first class. We had five seats to share between the four of us. The boys adjusted to confinement pretty quickly. They played with all the toys in my bag, ate some snacks, played some more and then finally dozed off to sleep a couple of hours into the long flight from London to Houston. We thought we were in for a pretty smooth trip home at that point. But that's when the fun began, and by fun I mean nightmare.
J woke up and was a little bit fussy. Then, out of nowhere, he threw up all over himself and all over me. Luckily we had thrown the boys pj's in my backpack. All I had for me was a pack of wet wipes! At first, I thought J may have had motion sickness, but this stuff kept coming and it didn't stop even when we were on the ground. We began collecting barf bags and came up with a system to keep the mess contained. We were only 5 hours into our flight with over 5 hours remaining. I was counting down the minutes until we landed. I began to wonder about my other bubba who had fallen back to sleep. As we neared Houston, I thought we were through the worst of it. By this time, I had N on my lap and like de ja vu, I found myself holding the barf bag for him. Now we had two boys throwing up on the plane. An hour later we landed and were done with the worst flight ever!
That was the first leg of our three-stage trip home. The short flight across the channel was uneventful. Heathrow Airport had its customary inconveniences, but before long, we were safe and sound in our comfy hotel room. We had a nice dinner and then decided to get some sleep in preparation for an early morning flight to Houston.
Stage two of our long trip home began where it left off; hectic and harried Heathrow Airport. Getting through security lines can be a test of anyone's patience. With restless twins who somehow sense they will be couped up on a plane for the next 11 hours, security lines are down right difficult. Having unsimpathetic security screeners doesn't help matters much either. What a circus act it is to take off four sets of shoes, fold up the stroller and place it on the belt, keep an eye on the bag that is pulled off the line for a more thorough inspection and make sure everything goes through the x-ray scanner, even pacies and puppies which the boys were reluctant to give up! By this time, the boys were starting to fall apart and I realized that I had to find some breakfast before we left. I found a little place that had coffee and breakfast sandwiches and Matt went to see if the plane was boarding. I decided to have our sandwiches warmed. But before they were done, Matt came running back to tell me that they had made the last call for our flight. Not wanting to leave breakfast behind, I told the cashier that we needed our sandwiches NOW and we had to run to catch our flight.
Lucky break! A kindhearted flight attend who realized we were traveling with twins relocated us to an empty row in a quiet section of the plane just behind first class. We had five seats to share between the four of us. The boys adjusted to confinement pretty quickly. They played with all the toys in my bag, ate some snacks, played some more and then finally dozed off to sleep a couple of hours into the long flight from London to Houston. We thought we were in for a pretty smooth trip home at that point. But that's when the fun began, and by fun I mean nightmare.
J woke up and was a little bit fussy. Then, out of nowhere, he threw up all over himself and all over me. Luckily we had thrown the boys pj's in my backpack. All I had for me was a pack of wet wipes! At first, I thought J may have had motion sickness, but this stuff kept coming and it didn't stop even when we were on the ground. We began collecting barf bags and came up with a system to keep the mess contained. We were only 5 hours into our flight with over 5 hours remaining. I was counting down the minutes until we landed. I began to wonder about my other bubba who had fallen back to sleep. As we neared Houston, I thought we were through the worst of it. By this time, I had N on my lap and like de ja vu, I found myself holding the barf bag for him. Now we had two boys throwing up on the plane. An hour later we landed and were done with the worst flight ever!
After arriving in Houston, we had to go through customs and boy did we smell lovely! We got our bags and were able to change clothes. The question at hand was whether or not to continue on the last leg of our flight. Home sounded so sweet and what was another 2 hours? J was through the worst of it and N seemed to be getting to the end of it, too. So we decided to go for it. We boarded a packed flight from Houston to Denver and as we were sitting there, N started throwing up again. After some talking amongst the flight attendants, a customer service representative came on and told us that the captain was advising that we not fly. He escorted us off the plane with our luggage still below. He arranged a hotel room for us that night along with some meal vouchers. It was nice of them to do that for us and was probably the best thing to do given our situation, but still, it would have been nice to be home and spend the 4th of July... well, not in a Houston hotel room.
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