After cleaning and packing and sardine-ing and saying sad farewells to extended family, we loaded back up in our rental van for the final leg of our trip. Though we flew in to Orlando, we flew out of Raleigh-Durham.
As far as the kids knew, we were headed straight to the airport, but Mark and I had one final surprise in store for them. Since our flight didn't leave till 6:30 pm, we had time to stop and visit the Raleigh Children's Museum.
The place was packed (not too surprising on a hot, summer Saturday), but had lots of fun exhibits and activities. One highlight was the super-sized Legos. The boys built themselves a large "castle."
When I pointed out they'd neglected to make doors, the assured me that was intentional, "we want to have to jump over the walls!"
Sadly, Aubree is beginning to age out of children's museums. Towards the end of our visit, she preferred to sit by Mark and play a game on his phone.
The boys had endless energy. I hoped having a few hours of hard play would make it more likely they would sleep on our red-eye flight.
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| Thane planting sunflowers |
Our journey home had two legs. The first flight took us to Chicago (hello, Sean!). I have very little memory of that flight. That either means that it was forgettably smooth, or so bad I've blocked it out.
Thankfully, our layover this time was much shorter. We had time to get the kids changed into pajamas and explain (very seriously), that they HAD to sleep on the second flight.
Ultimately, they all did fall asleep, but it wasn't easy or pretty. Aubree and Bryce are just big enough that they can't comfortably lie down or curl up on the airplane seats. Yet, they're too small to be able to sleep sitting up/leaning against the window. There was quite a bit of complaining and crying, even though they really were trying hard to get some sleep.
When we were finally picked up by our good bishop, we were beyond glad to be home and back to our own beds.
And we have no plans to fly with our whole crew again anytime soon!
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