We made it!!

We made it!!!

The last few days in Hamburg were pretty tough with last minute packing, keeping the cats in sight, finishing with our house, and last minute kid events, but my friends once again pulled through and we made it!

Our travel here was perfect.  It all started at the Hamburg airport with the Lufthansa guy who, maybe out of pity, ignored the fact that ALL our bags were overweight.  Then he let our cats fly free!  ...which would have been 150 euros per cat.  :)

The next Lufthansa guy at the gate then took one of carry-ons and checked it all the way to Boston for free ...one less bag to manage.

In Frankfurt we actually got seats on that dumb bus that takes you from runway to terminal. Our layover was just long enough for us to eat lunch and then get another one of our carry ons checked at the gate.  Seems there was a space issue in the cabin so checking this carry on wasn't really an option ...and it invoked a little stress because, since we were moving, we were carrying every single important piece of paper we had.  Birth certificates, green card application, cat paperwork, car/house deeds, social security cards, certificates, etc ...enough to fill an entire carry on suitcase!  We took out the most important papers and now we had one less carry on to wrestle with.

We arrived in Boston seven hours later, which, when you are used to a 11 hour flight, seems like such a short amount of time!  Scotty and Andrea didn't even fall asleep!

Boston was the part of the journey when we got to find out if Happy the Canadian actually even got to enter the USA!  We made it through customs and were then escorted to "secondary", which is where you go if the main border control doesn't let you in.  On the way to secondary we walked past out cats who were just being unloaded... so we grabbed them too.  There were no other people in secondary.  Not one.  Just Paul and me, four kids & two cats.  :)  No waiting.  Paul did his thing and in five minutes he had a green card and we were released out into the American Baggage Claim!  YAY!!!

We got all our luggage, bought some cheese-its and lemonade and went to meet our taxi van who was waiting there with a "Happy" sign.  :)  An hour later we made it to our fully furnished home for two months.

...more later, have to get Scotty to SCHOOL!!!!!