Adventure to Utah....via point Seattle PART I

I had major anxiety every time I starting thinking about our adventure to try and make it back to Utah for our summer trip. There are several factors that I worried about. The first and major factor was that we were trying to fly Space A from Germany to Utah. Space A is pretty much trying to get on the military flights/tankers that fly to and from different bases around the world. It is VERY stand by and especially in the summer. We were warned that we could be waiting at a terminal on base for a week before we would be able to get out. Abe kept reminding me that I had to be mentally prepared to sleep in the terminal with all three kids. Ugh.

We started our adventure by checking the flight we wanted to get on at Ramstein AFB all night long to make sure that they didn't change any times. The military likes to change things all the time! We ended up leaving our house at 4am and driving 3 hours to Ramstein. "Roll Call" was at 8am for the flight we wanted to get on and you have to be there about an hour early. At roll call, they go through an intensive list of people and call the top ones to get seats on the flight. It's confusing, but there are different categories and you pretty much want to be in a high category and at the top of the list... which is hard. We were called for roll call and got right on the plane. The was a C-17 and we sat in little jump seats on the sides of the plane with a bunch of cargo in the middle. It was so loud that I could not hear my kids screaming unless I was looking at them to see that they were screaming. My friend Sara gave us some ear muffs for all the kids which I was so grateful for. In hindsight, I do not know what I would have done without them! Norah was completely freaked out on the first plane with the environment and the noise level. We had her sit on our lap or hold her hand a lot. We had a quick stopover in Dover, Delaware where we pretty much got off the plane to do customs and got right back on. That flight went straight to Seattle. It was almost 9 hours flight from Germany-Dover and about 5.5 Dover-Seattle. Of course my kids didn't' sleep hardly at all on the first flight and only Adeline slept on the 2nd flight. They were beat when we arrived because it had been almost 24 hours since they woke up.











We had no plan once we got to Seattle. We found a place to stay on base and the next morning started checking where the flights were headed in the next 72 hours. Our plan was to either buy last minute tickets to SLC, or try and get a military flight to either SLC or Vegas. Luckily, a couple days later they had a flight going directly into SLC. We took advantage of our waiting time and rented a car and went into the City. I had never been to Seattle before and LOVED it. We all had jet lag pretty bad, but survived. The first couple of nights the kids would go to bed fine, but wake up and want to be awake all night long!
While in downtown Seattle we enjoyed the Children's Museum. The girls LOVED it!


















Space Needle




I absolutely loved the Public Market/Pike's Place. Oh how I wish I could have bought some fresh lobster and shrimp there. The shrimp were the biggest I have ever seen! It was so fun seeing them throw fish in the market too.










The Rock n Roll Museum... The girls enjoyed dancing and watching their reflections. Can you see the girls in the distance standing against the museum with their hands up in the air?