Sunday was Not a Fun Day!

Continuing story from here... Have you ever checked baggage for 4 people MOVING to another country? It's not a pretty picture. We were WAYYYYY below our allowed baggage. Like, at half of what we could have had. In all, we checked 7 bags, out of an allowed 8, and only carried on 3 of the allowed 8. It is a durn good thing we had the double stroller, to carry the car seats, but holy carp if that wasn't a pain to get through security. And explaining to Hubs why I was putting my mascara, and itty bitty bottle of hand sanitizer into a zip top baggie was fun. (Because you know, Hefty zip top bags are going to single handed-ly prevent explosives on a plane...) Once we arrived in Atlanta, we were excited because we were going to get to see Paul's cousin at the airport. Except. We had car seats. And were forced to deplane last. Giving us all of 35 minutes to get half way across the Atlanta airport to our next flight. Ever try and rush through an airport eating a snickers bar, wrangling car seats, carry on bags, and two children who were hell bent on doing everything THEMSELVES? It's not something I recommend. We did NOT miss our flight, although, with the events of the next couple of days, I could have handled a few days in Atlanta while waiting on another connector... Once we landed in Baltimore, and my children were praised for being so well behaved...(this flight was at nap time...) it was getting to be dinner time and time for the kids to take a break! Military moves like this are trying on little bodies. We stopped at the USO after collecting our checked baggage, and decided to hit up a hotel for the night, since we had a 24 hour layover. And that is when I noticed...we didn't have the Hub's medical records in our possession any longer. His hand carried, must be delivered in person medical records. And since they had not made it to Baltimore, it was only obvious that they were left on the plane from Atlanta. (We are still attempting to track them down. Time differences are making this rather difficult.) The man in Baltimore, at the AMC terminal, or Military Terminal for all you civilians, said that without his records we may be unable to board our flight the next day. Cause you know, that's what we need...more stress! That night at the hotel, we discovered Little Z had green eye boogers. And not just sleep crust. Snot was coming from her eyes, or so it seemed. (Yes, I know, this is gross, but vital to the story later...) In order to clear this up, we squirted her with saline solution, flushed her nose with salt water, and made her sleep with a warm rag on her eyes, in hopes that it was "merely" pink eye, and we could combat it. The next morning, we checked out as close to 11 as possible and headed over to the airport to hang out in the USO for 5 hours till it was time to be ticketed for our flight. That went fairly well, other than some lady kept trying to kick us out of our comfy seats, and send us to the "family" room, that was already occupied by a family, with no room for the 4 of us to boot, plus, you know, we had a child with snot in her eyeballs. Nope, wasn't budging. And with some bribing, and the Nintendo DS, my kids were perfect for the first time ever. Other than when they are sleeping of course. When we went to board our flight, the guy took a look at our car seats and said "Nope. Not FAA approved." Now, I had checked, and there was nothing that I could see on Little Z's that said it, and since her and Big Z have the same seat, just one a little older than the other, I assumed they were fine. But old guy looked at Big Z's, and it said it was NOT approved, so he said no to both of them. GRRR! So we had to check them. After checking our stuff, we wandered through the airport in search of something to eat. Even though we were having 2 meals in flight, I was starving, and so were the girls. Our concourse had NOTHING to eat at it. And we had to clear security an extra time JUST to find something edible. Did I mention we had a double stroller? And kids? And security makes you remove your shoes?