Nassau County

Our alarm woke us at 5:30am and we were off and running; showers, breakfast, taxi, airport. Even with Saturday morning airport traffic and airport self check in machines that ALWAYS require us to line up again and speak with a "helpful customer service officer", we still made it with plenty of time.
It turns out I am a nevous flyer. It's not that I'm scared or worried about the plane crashing, I'm scared and worried about being trapped in my seat, locked in with my children for hours and hours. Tom bought me a stomach calming juice which was heavy on ginger, but it didn't really ease my anxiety.
We boarded our flight through the business class entry and followed the business class path to the top entrance of the plane. Tom loved it! Unfortunatley that's where the glamour ended. We had great cattle class seats upstairs on an A380. Upstairs is all of first class, business class, premium economy, then about 8 rows of economy, that's all! So we felt a bit special.
Since our trip last year, Adalia has fostered an enormous fear of plane toilets. I think she thought she was going to be sucked down with the loud swoosh noise they make when you flush. So you can imagine my joy when I needed to take her for the first time. She SCREAMED, placed her hands on either side of the door to block both and would not budge. I somehow got her in and closed the door, but there was so much screaming. I assured her that I wouldn't flush until after she had gone back to her seat and somehow I got her to go. I was so embarrassed to find waiting outside the door was a flight attendent and Tom who were worried about all the screaming!!
The kids would not sleep on the first flight so my anxiety was growing, we wanted to keep them up on the second leg to get them a bit better adjusted to the different time zone. I think in the end they both slept maybe an hour at the most.
When the "cabin crew were preparing for landing", Adalia had a sudden onset of stomach cramps and was once again screaming. I don't know what the other passengers thought of us, but that child sure likes to attract attention. There was nothing I could do, but she was making me feel so stressed. Tom seemed to block the screaming out and continued watching his movie. She didn't really stop screaming until we were off the plane. We realised that she hadn't eaten anything on the whole flight and was probably starving! I tried to force feed her some biscuits and muslie bars that I had packed, but she wasn't keen
Our change of planes at LAX went smoothly and quickly, apart from them wanting us to declare the bread rolls I had packed for the flight, telling us to throw them out, then saying they were fine because I packed them at home?!?! Don't quite get the logic.
The next flight we were crammed into economy once more. Flying truely is the only time I wish I were filthy rich and could afford to waste money on first class tickets. It was so hot, Adalia who had overcome her fear of the toilets needed to go every two minutes and we were nowhere near them, and lets face it plane food is ordinary, especially kids meals, and I really needed Adalia to eat something.
We were all so tired, Against my better judgement I dozed off, Adalia fell fast asleep, Tom nodded in and out, but Samuel stayed glued to his screen. This in itself was a bad thing. Our flight ended up being unable to land due to terminal congestion following bad weather, so we had to fly around for an extra hour, at which point Samuel hit the wall. He didn't fall asleep, he decided he was plane sick. He was white in the face, loooked awful and said he felt like he was going to be sick. The seatbelt sign was on, so in my mind, vomiting wasn't an option. I calmed him down enough to sort of doze, but he wasn't happy.
It seemed like this day would never, ever end. The plane took forever to get clearance to land, then the taxi to the terminal was like slow motion, it seemed like our luggage was last onto the conveyer belt (which gave us plenty of time to discuss whether a Meghan Markle look-alike really was her or not) then our taxi to our hotel was stuck in the worst traffic jam. My travel sick sleep deprived boy did not appreciate the taxi drivers windows staying down when we were in an underground tunnel in a traffic jam.
We finally reached our hotel at about 8:30pm. The kids had passed through fatigue and into delerium. They were hyper. We dumped our luggage in our room to find dinner. To ensure adalia would actually eat something at dinner we found the nearest maccas, ordered happy meals for the kids, laughed that the thick shakes we ordered were literally soft serve in a cup, then I high tailed back to the hotel, only stopping to get cranky with Tom who thought we should be sight seeing at 10pm at night when we were all beyond smashed.Read more