The adventures of a 4300 mile move

Life has been a bit crazy since I last blogged.  After blogging that Ben was also sick, his fever went up to 105.5 while on antibiotics and fever reducers.  We spent the next two days battling his fever to keep it in the 101-103 range.

We got him better in time for the cats health certificate to fly.  The vet noted that Sammy was "obese but otherwise healthy" (snicker).  With Murray, she guessed that he was losing his vision, has a heart mummur, and his liver values were off.  Murray is very special to me, so this was quite upsetting.  We saw the vet we love here in Montgomery and she confirmed that Murray only sees shadows and is almost blind.  She said the other two things are non-issues at this time.  I made Murray ;promise he'd live forever.  He seems happy enough and has adjusted well with all the changes in the move, so it seems it isn't impacting his life much.

After all that was the actual flight.  I expected for us to get kicked off the plane, so really I guess it went better than expected.  We took from Anchorage at 9pm on July 16th and landed in Minneapolis at 5:40am on July 17th.  On the plane, Ben kept saying he was scared and started shaking during take-off.  Liam and I sang to him and distracted him and he relaxed once we were in the air.  I gave both boys melatonin, and the night went like this:
-Ben falls asleep in carseat, Liam awake for 45 minutes (and two extra doses on melatonin)
-Liam falls asleep across my lap (Dave was across aisle and missed all this fun)
-5 minutes later, Ben starts crying and comes out of his carseat so now BOTH boys are on my lap
-20 minutes later, they both start crying and Liam goes in carseat
-15 minutes later, Liam starts crying and comes back on my lap.
-10 minutes later they both are crying and Ben goes in carseat
-10 minutes later both in my lap

It repeated every 5 to 10 minutes, switching from carseat to lap.  At one point out of exhausted desperation, I woke Dave who had slept through 4 hours of this, but that only resulted in Dave, me, Liam, and Ben smooshed into 2 airline seats.

Did I mention that they cried every 10 minutes?

We land in Minneopolis and are hurring to find are connection which was due to leave in 10 minutes when Liam barfed all over himself and the floor in the middle of a crowded terminal.  The good news is that our 2nd flight was delayed.  Flight to Atlanta was uneventful.  While at baggage claim, Ben was so exhausted he passed out in his stroller and napped 4 hours through the transfer into the car, drive to the hotel, and being carried into the hotel.  Liam, was awake until Tuesday night,,,,which meant he was awake for about 40-48 hours straight.....he even managed to swim for 3 hours in the hotel pool and never exhibited a single sign of sleepiness.

Let me interject here to declare: "I HATE YOU PARENTS OF GOOD TRAVELERS." and I believe there is a special spot in hell for people who declare confidently that it is the parents that make children good travelers.

We arrived in Alabama on July 18th, and soon found out that the moving company SCREWED up.  There were supposed tocall us when our stuff reached Alabama, but they "forgot."  They were supposed to call a 2nd time before putting our stuff in a storage unit, but they "forgot" to do that too.  As a result, we didn't get our stuff until July 28th.  I am sitting in a house, surrounded by boxes.

We cannot get referrals for therapy which means we cannot get on any waiting lists.  Dave is considered to be "on leave" which is funny as this hasn't felt like a vacation.  Until he is allowed to in-process to base (which he cannot do yet), we cannot get in to see a PCM.  Our Alaska doctors are not allowed to refer the boys for therapy here in Alabama and we only have access to urgent care.

The extra fun part is that we get to do this move again next year.