Our Trip to Seattle -- Part 1: The Flights

A few months ago, Amy's brother and his family moved to Seattle. The four of us decided to spend a week visiting them.

Believe it or not, the suit case you see here is the only suit case the four of us took! We carried all of our luggage on the plane--one suitcase, two backpacks, and two babies (plus a stroller and two car seats checked at the gate). Amy was a little annoyed with me the night before when we were packing and I would say stuff like, "You don't need four pairs of jeans and three pairs of shorts. We will only be there one week and we are planning to do laundry." But seriously, you don't need four pairs of jeans. As it turns out, she only wore jeans once the entire time we were there. :)
Before getting on the plane, we let the kids crawl around the airport. Yes, I know it is dirty but we thought it was worth letting them burn some energy before our four hour flight. Caroline loved the large open areas.
This was the first flight for our kids. Amy and I were very nervous about the four hours each way with the kids sitting on our laps. Thankfully, Caden and Caroline did great. They slept close to half the time each way and were in pretty good moods. They cried a little but not anywhere near as much as we feared they might.

The flight there had more babies than I have ever seen on a flight. There were twins in front of us, triplets a little in front of them, and at least three other single babies!

I held Caroline most of the flight. This is a picture of us just before we took off from Austin. The AC was off at the airport and the plane was hot. You can see it on my shirt. Thankfully, you can't see the front of my shirt. :)
Caden and Caroline sat on the row behind us. The plane was full so the four of us were unable to sit on the same row. There is only one extra oxygen mask per row so it cannot handle two babies.Another thing Amy and I were worried about was how the kids would sleep in Seattle. In the past, they have not slept well away from home. Thankfully, the twins slept pretty well in Seattle. Ella generously gave up her room so the twins could sleep in separate rooms. Caroline slept through the night almost every night. Caden slept through the night as long as he was allowed to sleep in the bed with Amy. Caden takes up sooooo much room that I was forced to sleep in the other room with Caroline.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, we survived the massive earthquake registering 2.5 on the Richter scale that struck the Seattle area. I'm sure everyone saw it on the news. :) We made it through unscathed without feeling a thing.

Our return flight went even better than our flight to Seattle. This time, the plane was nowhere near full. We got the back row all to ourselves. This gave us room to let the twins share a seat. Here is a picture of them watching a DVD.