Saying our Goodbyes..

We finally got everything loaded up.. good thing we had a 15 passenger van to use. We had all of our luggage as well as a bunch of things we would be storing at Nana and Papas.. we filled that van up! We then headed over to say goodbye to Autumn and her children after which we headed to Portland where we would be eating dinner with Grandma Barb and Aunt Katie and then staying for 2 days at Nana's before flying out to BZ from PDX

 

 

Oh, it was so hard to say goodbye to my precious sister in Jesus!

There were many tears, hugs and laughter

 

Sweet friends

 

The morning of our flight, we arrived to the airport at 3:45 am which was 2 hrs and 15 minutes before our departure time. I wanted to make sure that we had enough time to check 10 bags, show all of our paperwork for our service dog and permission forms from Grady to fly out of the country with the girls. Turns out we really should have left ourselves about 1/2 hr more time.. after passing through security which took forever, we had to hike to the other side of the airport to catch our plane. They had already been boarding for about 10 minutes before we got to the gate!

 

My mother helped push the luggage carts full of bags up to the check in counter while the Rubins, who had come to help took the carseats out of the van and helped carry in the carry ons.

 

 

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Papa comforts Sadie who is about to take her first flight. ( she did so well!)

 

Our precious friends the Rubins literally pulled up right behind us at the curb of the airport. They could not have timed their arrival any better! Thank you Lord! I needed everyone's help for sure. We ended up having 10 checked bags, a stroller, 2 checked carseats, 8 carry on items, 2 little girls and a service dog. I like to call it controlled chaos.. without the help of my mother, Ben, my big girls and the Rubin family it would have been pure chaos! LOL

Of course saying goodbye to Nana is always the hardest of all. We miss you so much Nana! WE LOVE YOU!

 

At the gate of our first flight, the flight attendant offered to check some of our heavier carry ons. I quickly agreed but regretted it later when I remembered all of Laura's clothes had been in one of the carry ones that I let them check. The poor girl was in these pj's all day until we got to our rental in Belize! We ended up being at the Belizean airport in customs for over 2 hours and she was so HOT! :-) Poor baby!

Sadie was such a good girl! She just slept on Ashley's feet on both flights. United was kind enough to put both Ashley and Grace (with Sadie) in the economy plus area for free so that she would have more room to lie down.

 

After a loooong day of travel, it was so fun to see the first glimpses of Belize again! Yay, we were finally back! AND we were going to see our guys after 2 long weeks and 2 days!