South Africa, Getting There: January 31

Our little family got the once-in-a-lifetime experience to go to South Africa to visit my parents on a mission. I want to remember every detail, so I'll be posting long entires with tons of pictures. Enjoy as much or little of it as you'd like!!

January 31, Day one:

Our journey got off to a horrible start! Our flight was scheduled for early Saturday morning, and about 11 pm friday night, Cecily threw up. I had no idea if she was sick--she had no fever and seemed totally happy--in fact in the bath tub, she was laughing and splashing water and being her crazy self. Either way, that night all three of us got hardly any sleep--probably three hours for me, two for Ryan, and maybe four for Cecily. We were trying to pack all the last details and it took much longer than planned.

Somehow we made it on the plane with everything we needed, and headed to Atlanta. It was a four-hour flight, and Cecily threw-up for the third time, so we figured it was more than just bad food. She already had once in the airport while waiting in line--got all over her blankie and her outfit. (Luckily, we brought a few extra outfits. We used all of them.) I knew I was in for a really long and painful journey!!! We also discovered that the poor little thing was constipated, but we had no laxative for her, and no way to get one for another 30 hours. So any liquids we tried to give her to loosen her up just came right back up again. We also didn't have a working DVD player because it didn't get charged long enough (we got about one little einsteins show in before the battery died...), so keeping Cecily happy was tough. Oh man, I'm getting stressed just thinking about it all over again!

The roughest part was from Atlanta to Johannesburg. It was an 8-hour flight to Dakar, Senegal, where we stopped to unload passengers and just sat and waited for two hours for a security check. Ceci had been awake for the last 6 hours of that flight and was FINALLY ready to crash but they made us stand up to check all our seats and she was crying and I wanted to rip my hair out. Finally we took off to Jo-burg, and she slept for the first four hours of the next 9 1/2-hour flight.

Then in Jo-burg, we had to get all our bags and go through customs, and wait for over two hours for another flight to East London. Cecily had reached her limit and was crying the whole time. Total meltdown. I finally got her distracted with the escalator that we went up and down about a million times. At this point, she finally had stopped throwing up and had eaten some crackers and juice. Thank goodness. The last flight was just a quick one, about an hour, and Ceci crashed right at the end. I cannot express how nice it was to finally walk off that plane and see my parents' smiling faces! Of course, my mom cried when she hugged us and her little grandchild. The last she saw Ceci was when she was just a little 6-month-old baby. Ceci was asleep in my arms walking off the plane but woke up and went straight to her Nani. I knew she'd remember her.

About to get on our last flight!!!! Woohoo!

My fabulous Mother had the warmest welcome for us. They had made plumeria leis for each of us--who knew Africa was so much like Hawaii?? Then at home she'd hung signs for us, and made us my very favorite--homemade potato soup and cheesecake. It was the most comforting meal I think I've ever had and we all crashed at 10 pm SA time. But the lack of sleep was just starting...Ceci got up at 3 am to about 6 and then I finally got to crash again until 1 pm the next day.

Isn't this picture so sad??? My poor sick little girl

So, after reading that, who wants to fly to Africa with a toddler???? Sounds fun huh!! It turns out that all of the pain and suffering was worth it for the cool experiences we had. That stuff is coming up next....