Niagara Falls (looks like a mini Vegs!)
Well, and we are off… like a heard of turtles! You know how when you have those days when everything goes wrong no matter how you planned it all to the tee? But then you REALLY have a day where you back up and say “Wow EVERYTHING really went wrong, I wish I had not made a big deal out of every other time I thought things went wrong, because THIS time it ALL did!”
Yeah, my last 2 days were like that.
But we made it, and I am sitting in the living room of my parents beautiful apartment in Beijing China, and the 3 kids we intended to come with us, are here as well, so that is a victory I have to be grateful for! Although the oldest one almost got intentionally left in the airport at Newark for all I cared at that moment!
We left Saturday morning. I had gone to bed the previous night at 1:30 am and got up at 5am to get as much done as I possibly could on my first day off.
Wait, let me back up. Wednesday was my birthday. That morning my little sister made a comment about how she has not seen our Visas (Chinese Visas) come in yet. HOLY CRAP! Where were they????? After some tracking down they were not going to be here in time for our flight on Saturday night. Paul spent Wednesday at the Chinese Consulate getting last minute Visas {this “only” cost us an additional $830} what a disaster.
Fast forward to Friday night, I started doing laundry and packing at 9 pm for a 2 week trip to China. Don’t judge people. I had a BAD week. We got to bed at 1 am and got up at 3am to get to the airport. I am now running on 6 hours of sleep for the last 3 days. At the airport we park the car, and take a bus to the terminal. The driver drops us off last even though we are the first on and tell him we are worried about time. At one of the terminals he and another airport employee get into a shouting match for no joke, 10 minutes over whether the employee can get on that bus. We get to the counter and they refuse to check us in, we got there 43 minutes before our domestic flight and the cut off is 45 minutes. WE MISS OUR FLIGHT.
This starts a spiral of JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING GOING WRONG for the next 24 hours. But to spare you the details, oh except for my sons misadventure that I have to document for his children, I am going to just going to pretend like that 24 hours never happened.
Back to my darling 14 year old son. We tell him under no circumstances is he to let anything of his out of site. Once in the Newark airport, you had to take a bizarre series of trams to get to Air Canada to go to Toronto. My husband had to go to baggage claim and get our checked luggage and sent us to the gate. The kids and I drug our carry ons through one terminal and the next hoping on all sorts of employees trams and such. I travel often and have never seen anything like this.
As we walk up a set of stairs out side the building my youngest daughter was having trouble getting her bag to the top, my son grabbed her bag to help her. This might sound sweet, but it was accompanied by “your so stupid why can’t you figure out how to pick up your bag” type of thing that a 14 year old says to a 10 year old sibling. At the top we are finally to our gate and sit down to breath for a sec and dig out a granola bar for lunch. A little later I just naturally start counting luggage as I am usually counting children and realize we are short my sons carryon. It has EVERYTHING he owns for the trip in it! We start running through the terminal looking for it.
I finally spy it right at the top of the ramp by the door from the outside stairs where we came in from the tram. Except that it is in the middle of the terminal walkway surrounded by security. It had been sitting right there for a while and was considered abandoned luggage and so now the entire Newark bomb squad and security were deciding who was going to drag it away. OH CRAP! I figured it was better if a kid runs up to it then me so I shove my 14 year old up there to go claim his luggage. They were not happy. In fact they were so unhappy that *I* got an additional pat down and just about full body cavity search with my luggage tore apart while waiting for our flight. AWESOME. Thank you son.
Somehow we made it to Toronto for a 24 hour layover which we were able to rent a car and hotel and go see Niagara Falls. If you have never been there, PUT IT ON YOUR BUCKET list! It was the most amazing place and I considered missing my plane to stay another day. Oh wait, we almost did that.
It was beautiful and there was SO MUCH TO do! We promised the kids we would come back again and bring siblings and stay a week next time.
NOW IF YOU ARE A BLOGGER OR GENERALLY ADDICTED TO THE INTERNET, TURN AWAY NOW!
I called Air Canada before we left to make sure we had internet on the 12 hour flight to Beijing. Yes, we did, they told me and I asked how much it was. $9.99 they responded, I really didn’t care if it was $99.95 that fast that I was getting 12 hours of uninterrupted time to work was what had been keeping me going for the past 3 days of hell. I had been looking forward to me and my computer having some quality time almost a little too much, I had a mile long to do list and was going to concur it all!
Once in the air I grabbed my laptop and went to town trying to figure out how to connect, I wasn’t seeing it so I called a fight attendant over. She actually laughed when I asked her how to connect.
“What do you mean you don’t have internet on this fight?’ I almost yelled.
“We don’t have internet on ANY of our flights” she informed me.
And that is when I finally lost it and Paul found me curled up in a ball under my seat, sucking my thumb crying. He tried to tell my how great it will be to just relax, sleep and watch movies. Something I am not good at in general. I just wanted to work and get some stuff done I had been trying to get to for months. I was really and seriously crushed. I sat there with a blank stare for an hour before Paul talked me into “Harry Potter 7.”
You would not believe the crazy stuff I left out of this post and you would have gotten the entire story if I had internet on the plane, so you can either be happy or sad about that! But we are happily in Beijing and I will update you daily about our adventures!
Part comedian, part Dad, part athlete. He will boss around your children while they play ball.
Just as angelic as she looks, this girl could easily raise a Village by herself, and all the children would grow up to be President.
Self proclaimed, she would be a webkinz dog. Because, "they're cute, and puppies are too. And they're sweet and they always get along with other puppies."
This mini-Martha Stewart can handle ANY craft you send her way. She isn't all bows and rainbows, she's got karate kid moves!
Not "Pick-Me-Up" like caffeine, she wants you to pick her up! AND NOW!
Anything that can be destroyed WILL be destroyed!
Practically Perfect in Every Way for now! Nicknamed "The Panda" she is rolly polly and lives by the motto, "the little one, is KING!"
The resident Labradoodle, Miller got his name because Mom won and got to name the baby! Need something chewed up? He'll take care of it. Especially if it's expensive..
Tiffany,
I love reading your post! They always make me laugh. As a mom of 6 wonderful angels myself, we have never had a “normal” vacation. It’s good to know that this stuff happens to other families, I wouldn’t trade a minute of my crazy family for anything. My oldest is 30, youngest 7 year old twins, my 30 year old, his wife and his 2 girls, still go on family vacations with us. My 25 year old comes home to go on vacation! They want to be apart of the crazy stuff!! Think of the memories you are making…………. and thanks for sharing them with us!!
Brab, it is fun through all of it! It only takes a little bit to forget and laugh!
hugs
Ok first I want to say Happy Belated Birthday!!!
Thank you for this post I laughed my butt off!!! I’m glad you guys made it safely hopefully the rest of your trip will be smooth sailing 🙂
That was a fun read. Maybe you’ll feel like rehashing some of those crazy moments you left out for future posts. I’d love to read them! Take care, have fun, sounds like a one-in-a-lifetime kind of trip!
Oh my goodness! I can feel the panick! Hope you enjoy the rest of your trip. Glad you enjoyed Canada…. Next time head west to Alberta, if you really want to be impressed ;).
Beijing is amazing and will make up for your misadventures thus far….I promise!
I’m so happy you made it!!! What a disaster. This must mean you have a phenomenal experience ahead of you. Can’t wait to live this one vicariously through you!! Our love to your parents! Best of luck.
Ohh Tiffany,
I don;t have kids but the most strange/awesome/worst things happen to my husband and my self when we are on trip. At the moment sometimes I caught my self asking (why me???) but them when we are back home and have a chance to talk about our adventures I realized how fortunate we are to have such as exciting adventures to share…… So thank you for sharing your craziness with us I really enjoy reading them and yes I so wished you would’ve have internet on that plane because your story was short! 😛
Happy Belated Birthday!!!
Oh!!! You make the rest of us feel normal!!! Thank you!!!
It has to get better!! Glad you made it safely, with kids and luggage intact 😉
Happy birthday! I just wanted to ask if you found good deals on the boat ride you took at the Falls? We are going soon. Have a great vacation.
That really just stressed ME out!! 🙂
Ah yes, travel can be so much fun since 911! Thankfully when my daughter traveled with us (she is 34 now) when everyone was more understanding. My biggest problem is now my husband. First he hates to fly, let me get that out of the way. Last time we flew they did a pat down on him because he left his cell phone in his pocket (although I told him to take EVERYTHING out). We flew out of Flagstaff, AZ (VERY small airport) just so security and lines would not be as monumental as a large airport and we wouldn’t need to drive both ways to Phoenix (2 1/2 hours). We stopped at Phoenix to change planes and had a lay over. Great, we can grab something to eat. Get our food and sit down, but oh wait, he lost his outer shirt that he carries if he gets cold (over 80 degrees everywhere we are going). Looking for that (I think his ticket was in it – but he never admitted it) took the rest of our layover time. So – young or old you do tend to have 1 in the group. Thankfully we found it and he listened to me the entire trip. I can laugh now but wanted to leave him just like the 14 year old!
Niagara Falls is awesome. I took my daughter when she was around 12 and we both had a blast. I had relatives in New York we were visiting. This visit comes with a funny story in the Chicago airport on the way to Syracuse, NY. My daughter and I are in line at the ticket counter. She mentions that the guy behind us looks like an astronaut. I turn around and it was one of our best friends that lived in another state she didn’t recognize. I said hi Craig and I thought she would faint since I might know an astronaut! He worked for an airline and flew around the world teaching mechanics. He was also going to the same city to visit his family. We still laugh about how he was an astronaut (he had a carry on with a NASA seal).
Have fun with relatives and that is quite the long plane ride! I flew to Spain once when I was younger and that ride was long enough!
I love hearing about your adventures. I always do the planning and packing for our family travels. I can relate to the stress. The trips we take as a family are precious memories. Good or bad.. LOL
NOTE: To myself – Don’t always believe airlines when they tell you they have internet on a flight and never ever leave luggage unattended unless you want body search. Thank you for your posts and Happy Birthday.
WOW ! Sounds like you were really having a “Home Alone” kind of experience ! I hope the rest of your trip AND trip home go much better. Can it get worse ? Oops ! Pretend I didn’t say that 🙂
I was having a terrible day and you made me feel better!! Thanks for the laugh!
‘Sounds like you had a good ‘character-building’ experience!
While we have only four kids, our second oldest (20) just got back from a one month ‘culture-sharing’ experience in South Korea. Too-short Intl layover fun after two legs across the country: 60 minutes in San Fran to make it out of the domestic terminal, to the Int’l counter (huge 1 hr line), then get through security again in the Int’l terminal. A month later a 33 hour run (including layovers and via Guangzhou, China) to get back home.
At the beginning of July she goes back to Guangzhou for two months to teach Chinese kids English. I don’t know how she does those 12+ hour legs across the Pacific. Brutal. And she now realizes much/most of her Social Media is blocked over there. 😉
But I can’t imagine taking even our 4 kids to China – at least not until they are all adults! Good for you… and for them!
Thanks Bob! Your daughter sounds amazing. There are many english speaking teachers here and everyone wants to learn English. My daughters are loving it and I think they would be good at that also. Is she a teacher? Did she just graduate?
OK, you opened the door for a parental boast. 😉 She’s a junior at The University of Michigan, studying Linguistics and Psychology. Straight A’s so far. She has varying degrees of fluency in Spanish (can even recognize accents/dialects), Mandarin, and Korean. She really loves cultural immersion. The challenge for her is SE China speaks a lot of Cantonese and she’s still learning that one.
Are you traveling around China or hanging out in one area? Where?
Oh wow, great job Dad and Mom! We are really loving it here and wish all the kids were with us. I would love the opportunity to travel more and am so glad that these kids got to come with us!
We are mostly in Beijing, but are taking a trip to the hanging monasteries and hopefully the night train to the terra cotta warriors.
I so enjoy your family trip stories! Not that I like all the disaster you went through, but love your family more and more:-)
Hope you have a great trip in Beijing! We were there 2 summers ago, totally worth it, very interesting experience!
WOW..When you get home Tiff I am going to take you to Perry’s on Friday for Pork Chop Day and you are going to tell me EVERYTHING!!!!
OH my, how on earth did you ever make it past Newwark, New Jersey! I would have thrown such a fit about cavity search, I would be locked up LOL I hope you guys are having a blast! You deserve a nice break, internet on the plane or not. I love the story, its great. I traveled by myself to Scotland with 2 kids, one a special child, and I didn’t have that much trouble, but it was before 9-11.