The Journey Begins

We are sitting on the plane in Los Angeles. We have a 13 hour flight ahead of us but are truly feeling grateful.  Air China was nice enough to put us in bulkhead seats near the restroom which will make things substantially easier for Cali.  But not only is it nice for Cali, I have legroom like I've never had on a flight before.  Yay!!!

We are all so excited.  We're hoping to get some sleep on this flight.  Christi and I each got less than an hour and a half last night and we're pretty beat.  Things were actually going fairly well getting ready yesterday, but then we had a catastrophe.  Jesi, Xander, Lexi and Sophi were gone with Grandma and Grandpa Nelson.  Cali, Graci, Taylor and Parker were all still up around 10:30pm and packing.  All of the sudden Elli started screaming in her bedroom.  Usually she sleeps very well, so we were surprised to hear her.  Parker went to check on things and returned with a sad report:  "Elli threw up everywhere!"

Poor little girl was laying in it and it was covering her face.  She was so sad:(  Christi and I have a developed a pretty good system over the years.  When Elli gets really messy, Christi cleans Elli and I clean the clothing, bedding or whatever has solid matter on it.  It works out well as each of us prefers our job to the other person's.  So Christi put Elli in the bath.  I scrubbed the sheets and sanitized the rubber sheet.  We worked hard for 30 minutes or so and got things to the point that Elli could get back to bed.  Christi gently helped her back downstairs, tucked her in, and...Elli promptly threw up all over everything once again!  We repeated the entire procedure.  

This time Elli seemed to be a bit more settled, so we tried to put her back downstairs in her bed.  Usually Elle is very good about going to bed, but that room had traumatized her at this point and she really faught us.  Finally Christi told her that she would stay with her for awhile and Elli seemed to be ok.  Eventually she fell asleep and did well the rest of the night.

Parker asked me why I thought something like this would happen at the worst possible time.  I told him I wasn't sure but that there were likely lessons we could learn from it.  (Taylor actually complimented me on how calmly and peacefully I handled the situation.  Apparently I've had several opportunities to learn lessons in patience over the last few years!)

Anyway, the whole thing really threw us off our schedule.  But despite it all, we finished getting ready, slept for 75 minutes and made our flight.  Here we come Conner!  We love you!!!

-Jer