And the real trip has just begun!!!!

WOW! So it's been a LONG summer!! The kids, my mom, and I arrived in Alaska at the beginning of June... It's now the day before my birthday, and the summer is almost over! I was in Alaska spending time with close friends and family for 2 months! I got in almost a full baseball season, including a trip to Fairbanks, met new friends, and got reacquainted with old!

The summer started off with some time in Kenai, with my parents and little brother. When I went back to Anchorage, Blake decided that he loved his grandparents more, so he stayed most of the summer in Kenai with them. I stayed with Melissa and Jeff in Anchorage for quite a bit of the time! Our kids all got along great, and for having 4 kids in her house most days, 3 of them being in the terrible 2's, it really was kinda peaceful!! :)

When the Bucs headed up to Fairbanks for a long week of mostly loosing {it was a bad summer}, I did what I would have done any other summer and went up too!! I stayed with Melissa while I was there for the most part, and loved every minute of it! My Aunt watched the kids on my last night there and Lissa and I went out together for the first time to karaoke and beer! I have pictures and videos that I will eventually post, as soon as we get a place here and our computer up and running! The girls did well on the trip up and back down... I think they are getting WAY to used to being in the car seats!

Then we headed back to Anchorage, where we spent our last few weeks. Our paperwork down in North Carolina was slowly getting fixed. The last obstacle was our medical release forms and what was the hold up on that you ask??? The doctors over here thought I was pregnant with twins!!! Apparently they missed the fact that I had the twins ~ 2 years ago! So once our sponsor cleared that up, it was only a matter of waiting on a flight that had 5 seats on it to Okinawa.

We got to the airport at 4 am on Monday and boarded a plane at 0600 to Seattle. Once in Seattle, we had 2 hours to get Jake's bags from the lost luggage section (he'd left them in Seattle instead of bringing them up to Alaska), check in, get food, and let the kids run around... Well, we got his luggage, checked in, and was JUST getting our food when they started the preboard from Seattle straight to Tokyo! No lay over in Alaska, but we did fly straight over Anchorage! The 11 hour flight went incredibly well... We boarded, fed the kids some, and then they came back around and fed us {free food on international flights!!} again, passed out drinks, and watched movies the entire way there. All the seats have their own little TVs and you can choose between 9 different movies, 21 different music channels, and a map. The girls watched the movies, Blake used the earphones and listened to his, and Jake and I even got to watch a few! No one really slept on the planes, which turned out to be a good thing! We got into Tokyo 1 1/2 a head of schedule! Good thing too 'cause the girls had peed through their diapers and the car seats were a mess!! We needed that extra hour to change and kinda sink bath them, go through immigrations, get luggage, go through customs, check our luggage back in, go through security {which is SOOOO much easier in a foreign airport, you even get to keep your shoes on!}, and then grab a drink before we took a bus to a new airplane!

On the last airplane I'm pretty sure we all slept most of the way. I say pretty sure, because I DEFINITELY slept the whole way! :) It was a nice 3 hour nap that I really needed. When we got off the plane there, we grabbed our luggage and 4 Marines met us outside security. One, our sponsor, picked up us, the kids and a few bags and drove us to the store to get the necessities ~ Coke {FYI Japanese Coke is WAYYYY better than American Coke!!} & diapers! And then to the hotel room. The other 3 Marines grabbed all our luggage and went to the hotel! Our sponsor had already been in our hotel room and left us milk, cereal, snacks, etc, so when we got in, we snacked a little, showered and slept!

So far, we're almost on the time difference schedule. We're waking up around 5 am, but still going to sleep pretty well. Blake slept for 18 straight hours yesterday! He went down for a nap at 1 pm and was OUT until we all woke up in the am!

Okay, I'm off to the beach to enjoy my birthday! I think I'm going to celebrate it for 2 days this year! Since my birthday falls a day ahead of normal schedule, I think that works out just fine right?

Oh, and I can't upload pictures from this computer. This hotel is GREAT in having the Internet in every room, but it's on lock down! :) So you will eventually get pictures! I promise!

The trip is over!

Wow, so it started off on May 27th, but we'll use the 28th as day one for driving purposes. I had the bright idea that if we left during the middle of the night that the kids would sleep and I could get several good hours of driving in before I had to stop to sleep.... Surely they'd sleep in the car since I hadn't given them a nap or put them down to bed yet right?? Well, here's how it went: 9:00 we left Bicentennial Ave for good, the car backing out of the driveway and leaving Camp Lejeune! I was sad to leave Jake there to do all the cleaning, but if I had to drive across the country with our 3 kids, then he could sure do some of the cleaning! :) At 9:15 we stopped at McDonald's for drinks and to get the kids something to snack on before they were supposed to pass out. Sarah threw up all over the car! Milk cups were taken away! I forgot to get gas at that gas station, so at 9:25 we stopped for gas at the gas station right before you hit the 24 and go towards Richlands towards the 95. It was like $.03 more per gallon there than at the last gas station, but I was pretty sure it was the last one we'd see before we hit the 95, and I needed gas. So we filled up! 1/2 a mile down the road, the gas was $.08 cheaper than what we'd just paid for it!!! And then Sarah threw up again.... So now our car smells like puke, the cats wouldn't stop meowing, Blake kept kicking the DVD plug in and making the movie start over, and I was about ready to call it quits! But I turned up the music and pushed through North Carolina, Virgina, and got into West Virgina before we stopped for the day. We pulled over for about 2 hours in Virginia so I could take a short nap and all the kids woke up screaming, the cats didn't stop talking, and to top it off Sarah & Blake both puked all over everything! Yummy! So now the car DEFINITELY smells like puke & cat poop! We decided to drive into WV and then get a hotel. So at 1 pm we checked into a Red Roof Inn, snuck the cats into the room, and we all crashed for a while! We spent the whole day and night there resting up to continue on for day 2!

Day 2 {May 29th}:

We checked out of the Red Roof Inn in West Virgina with the hopes of finishing up our drive to Minnesota to see Taylor and Amy (and kids). Okay, now is where I need to give a little background for those of you who don't know the story. {Taylor, I am copying most of this from your blog... I'm lazy!} I have four best friends. We met when we were pregnant with our twins (yup all five of us have twins) on a message board for moms of multiples. There were a few others that we had become friends with through that group as well, but the five of us have become extremely close and talk nearly every day. And we live all over the US, for now anyway. There's Taylor in Michigan, she has Annie (5), JJ(3), Cooper and Tyson (21 months). Amy is also in Michigan, but on the other side of the state. She has Peyton (2), her twins Rayleigh and Jayden (17 months), and one on the way! Alyssa lives in North Dakota, and has Blake B (4, and B because we have two Blakes) and her twins are Ashlyn and Adyson (19 months). Gwen lives in Texas and has Kellan (5) and her twins Cassian and Dash (22 months). And finally we have me, and you all know me. I have Blake L. (4) and Sarah & Samantha (21 months). Whew that was a lot. Well, since I had to drive to Alaska anyway, and Amy, Taylor, & Alysssa's houses were on the way, I decided to stop by and finally meet them! So we leave from West Virgina and start driving. We had stopped and gotten all the kids meds for car sickness and then doped them with Benadryl... We drove forever that day it seemed and we stay at a hotel in Edmore, MI, Taylor's home town!!! We got to see Tyson before he had to go back and spend some time in the hospital, and get lots of pictures!!! Luke (Taylor's husband) found us a nice hotel room not far from his house. We stay there that night and checked out the next morning to spend the day with Taylor and go see Amy!


Day 3 {May 30st}: We checked out of the hotel after going swimming with Blake and headed over to Taylor's house. After Taylor got home from Coop's dr. appt. we left all 6 of the kids there (remember, Tyson is in the hospital at this time) with my mom and her step dad, and drove to a tattoo shop!!! The 5 of us have decided that we all wanted to get a tattoo of a pear to symbolize the "pear" of kids we had while we were preggo. With out that "pear" of kids, we would never have meet. The tattoo artist that did our tattoos said he normally tries to talk people out of getting matching tattoos but there was so much significance behind our story that he wouldn't try to talk us out of it, he has twin granddaughters! So here's our tattoo:

Amy wasn't there to get it with us, and since she is pregnant, she'll have to wait until after she has the baby to get hers. Alyssa and Gwen are getting theirs soon! After that, we packed up my car, got Annie & JJ in Taylor's car and drove 1 1/2 hours to a McDonald's play land in Saginaw, MI because it is the 1/2 way point between Taylor & Amy. Amy brought Rayleigh and one of her friends. We were there for about 4 hours (3 with Amy since she had a heck of a time getting there), and then I once again packed up my car and decided to make it as far as possible that night! We made it to Kalamazoo, MI, home town to Derek Jeter, so we decided to stay in a hotel there.

Day 4 {May 31}: We checked out of the hotel and drove!!! We made it out of MI, through Indiana, Illinois, & Wisconsin that night. Of course we stopped in Wisconsin for cheese, but we traveled on after that and stopped at the far side of the state, in Eau Clair. Oh my goodness, that city was horrible!!! I will NEVER EVER go back there. I sent out a text from there to make sure people knew where we were if they didn't hear from us again!!! So we stayed in the hotel as much as possible, snuck the cats in once again, and checked out as early as we could the next day!

Day 5 {June 1}: After checking out of our "hotel" room we drove the 2 1/2 hours to Mall of America! We couldn't wait to get there and was soooo excited!!! When we pulled up, I found out it really wasn't as big as I'd hopped! We got there an hour before it opened so we had so time to walk around and see where everything was. I guess the most impressive part was the horribly over priced rides for the kids and the underground aquarium. Since there was no way I was paying almost $80 just to get the 5 of us in the aquarium, we stopped at the Disney store when it opened, then Aunt Annies and got pretzels then got back on the road! We were going to see Alyssa! We did make it to Bismarck, but at like 8:30 that night.... We would have been there sooner, but one of the straps on the car top carrier came loose and after briefly thinking we were all going to die, I realized what it was. It took about an hour to get it all fixed back to normal, and by that time the kids were horribly fussy and everyone wanted out of the car. So instead of going to her house that night, we went straight to the hotel (about 4 minutes away) and slept!

Day 6 {June 2}: We woke up and after getting things cleaned up in the hotel room 'cause we were coming back that night, drove over to Alyssa's!!! After letting the kids play together and the Blakes going out on the 4 wheeler, we went over to Space Aliens, which was SOOOO much fun and sooo good! I will never look at a baked potato in the same way again!!!! :-) After like 2 hours there, Alyssa took her girls back home to lay them down for a nap and then her and her Blake came to play in the pool with me and my Blake! We were there for at least another 3 hours and the boys kept going down the water slide yelling "catch me"!!! So, very worn out, we drug the kids out of the pool, re-clothed them, and then headed off to Burger King for dinner and headed over to Alyssa again to play for a little bit longer while my mom rested up.

Day 7 {June 3}: This was the day I dreaded. We were leaving the US to go into Canada for the next however many days... I was terrified that they were going to completely unpack our car and then tell us that we couldn't get into Canada for some reason!! When we got there the very un-excited, boring customs people were mostly rude. They did make us unpack a little to get to the shot gun that Jake had packed in the car, and then pay the $25 fine for bringing a gun through, but that was it. It was much better than I had expected. We made it a good ways into Canada and stayed in a hotel that night.

Day 8-9 {June 4-6}: We drove as much as possible as long as possible. On the day of the 6th, we checked out of the hotel at 5:45 and was on the road again with breakfast in us by 6:30. That was our 2nd hotel that was crap and we wanted out as soon as possible. My mom started off by driving from 6:00-12:00. I took over and drove until 9 pm. Then she drove again until 11 and I took back over until 2 am. At 2 am, we got gas and pulled over at one of Canada's 4 rest stops (unlike the US, Canada only seems to have them with in 5 miles of a big town) near Whitehorse. We slept for 3 hours. When we woke up, our neighbors in a camper saw us and offered us the use of their rest room and we all got cleaned up! The gave us a box of pop tarts and coffee to go!! Sooo nice!!

Day 10 {June 6} FINAL DAY!!!: After getting coffee, I started to drive again. We were about 6 hours from the border at that point and then another 7 to Anchorage, so we were GONE! We only stopped for gas and the US customs border ~ where the guy there was VERY VERY VERY nice and it took only seconds to get on our way this time. I drove and drove until we got to Palmer area where we HAD to change diapers and us the gas cans. Then we hopped back in the car and made it to Jim and Jonie's house in Anchorage!!! I can't tell you how great it felt to be able to say I was back in Anchorage. I don't think the reality of it hit me again until Tyler picked me up and we went to Sea Galley with Casey and Tyler's friend Shane. Then we met up with Kali and saw and old friend Bobby!!! I poured myself into bed around 2:30 after some MUCH needed adult time!!

And now I am in Kenai. We went to Bobby's baseball games yesterday and I will be heading back into Anchorage with the kids either tonight or tomorrow! I can't wait to see all you there!!!

I'm trying to upload photos now, so as soon as that's done I'll post a link to them!!

And I will blog as much as I can later! We survived!!!

Rae