To Russia...and back again!

As many of you know, we had been saving for and planning a trip to Russia for a long time! My parents are serving a mission there and we took the opportunity to take our family there to visit. It took hours and hours to prepare for (each person needed a passport, visa and invitation into the country).

We hoped to choose a time when the kids wouldn't miss a ton of school and when Hailey would be old enough, but not too old to travel. We decided on October, during the kid's fall break from school, and when Hailey would be 6 months. It was perfect!! My sweet mom, prayed and prayed for months for good weather and good health, and those prayers were answered.

I'm going to break our trip down into several blog posts. We left early on Wednesday, October 19th. We flew to JFK (4 hours) and then from JFK to Moscow (10 hours). The kids were absolutely incredible on the flights - thanks to movies, game boys, nintendo ds's, an occasional nap and food. It was a bit of a smelly flight to Moscow (not to sound prejudice...but the Russians don't always wear deodarant), and Lindsey got airsick during our landing in NYC, but it went much smoother and quicker than we thought.

We arrived to blue skies (probably the last one for months & months) and to find my cute parents anxiously awaiting our arrival. It was 11:00 in the morning on October 20th that we arrived (but 1 a.m. the time we were used to).

We got all our luggage and piled into the mission van and their driver, Alexander, drove us to their mission office. We needed to make copies of all our documents, just in case we were ever questioned by the police. The traffic in Moscow (a city of 15 million), is downright, terrifying. They park on the sidewalks, create extra lanes, pull right in front of you and take every bit of space available. We were definitely watched over and protected and made it to the office and then to the mission home.

What a great blessing to see my parents and see their home, their lives, some of their missionaries, and the amazing work they are doing.

The ONLY complaint I had of the trip was - JET LAG!! Holy cow! Trying to get 8 people to adjust to a 10 hour time change was hard. We were so tired during times of the day and our kids would fall asleep all over the place. Just as we adjusted to the time change, we came home and had to adjust all over again. But, we did it and we are loving our fun memories of the trip!

Our family at the mission office - just after arriving in Moscow. I think we look pretty good for being up about 20 hours.

But then, these were the common scenes for several days...

Hannah

Hailey's favorite sleeping place - on my dad!