The Journey

Here I sit in a 4,000 sq. ft. villa in the Middle East! You might be asking how I got here. Well, let me back up and fill you in. Back in June, Andy came home to tell me that he threw his name in at work for a possible job assignment in Abu Dhabi. My first response was look at my growing belly....did you forget that we are having a baby in a few short months? I told him that I would talk to him about it when things got more serious. Well, that happened and he flew to Abu Dhabi in early September for the interview. After many weeks of not hearing anything, we got the call that his company had won the job. Matthew likes to tell everyone that we moved because Daddy won a contest! Andy spent most of January in Abu Dhabi getting things ready for us. He returned to the US for two weeks to collect the baggage (family). We really enjoyed his trip back home. It was filled with the twins fifth birthday party and a wonderful bon voyage party with lots of friends!

After two days of packers and movers at the house everything was on its way to storage and we were on our way to a hotel. A 14 passenger van picked us up at our house in Keller to take us to Embassy Suites in Grapevine. We had a penthouse suite with lots of room! After enjoying dinner and the boys birthday celebration at the Rainforest Cafe we spent the night in Grapevine on Wednesday, Feb 3rd. We made our way to DFW airport on Thursday, Feb 4th to head to Chicago. Before leaving, Andy's boss came out to wish us well.....okay, maybe he came to make sure we all got on the plane! That was so nice of him to show his support!

We arrived in Chicago mid afternoon and headed to the hotel. Hold up, let me tell you about the baggage that we had with us. In all we had over 30 bags! Here is a picture of us in Chicago collecting our bags. Since we were flying out the next day we collected everything and headed to the hotel. Up to this point, other people had helped us with our bags. Well, that wasn't the case at the the baggage claim in Chicago. We filled up THREE carts with our luggage. So, Matthew got to push one of the carts while Andy and I pushed the other two. Colin did a great job pushing the baby in the stroller. It was hysterical and I had to laugh to keep from crying! Would you believe that not one person offered to help us? At one point, we had to take the elevator down a few levels, but could not all fit on at one time. Matthew's cart managed to tip over spilling all of the bags in the elevator. Overall, we only left a few marks on the walls of the Chicago airport. Matthew really did a great job pushing the cart. Of course he did, he refers to himself as Spiderman with big muscles!

We made it to the hotel in Chicago and left 25 or so pieces of our luggage with the bellman downstairs. After ordering room service, we all went to bed early.

That is it for now, I'll be back next time to fill you on the 14 hour flight to the UAE!