I am so excited that I can finally post here – we don’t yet have a phone or internet connection, but for the first time since we got here, dd16 found one place where she can hook into a wireless connection.

I’ll start at the beginning and post more as this connection allows. 🙂

Wednesday morning was beautiful, and it really felt right to be leaving then – it was busy but not hectic.  At 5:50 am the best friends of ds9 and dd10 knocked on the door, and I sent them upstairs to wake up the kids they came to say goodbye to.  A little later a good friend of dd15 came and she and her mother, a good friend of mine, helped sweep the floors and take out all the luggage.  Ds12’s  best friend was there as well.  The driver we hired got there a bit late, but it gave us more time to get things wrapped up so we didn’t mind.  🙂

I was concerned that all of our thirty boxes wouldn’t fit into his trailer, but everything fit in exactly.  We pulled away with our friends waving goodbye, and this was the most emotional part for my kids; they really felt  strongly the feeling of leaving behind our home and their closest friends as we pulled away.  For me, the three extra days after having to postpone our trip gave me a chance to spend with friends, and I had a good sense of closure and connection.  The night before we left, a neighbor had us for dinner and invited other neighbors to come by for dessert to say goodbye, which was nice.  For years one very close friend and I have theorized about how nice it would be to meet for coffee and just chat without kids around, and the day before we left, she treated me to breakfast at a local cafe and that’s exactly what we finally did.  The week before had been so busy that we hadn’t had a chance to talk at all, and it was so special to be able to spend this time together before leaving.

We got to Newark in good time, three hours before our flight was set to depart, and then went about the fun of checking all of our luggage in. Everything went well, except for passing through TSA security, which was very pressured and the person there traumatized one of my kids when she told him to go through, he started to go but he walked too fast so she screamed at him, and then he was scared to go through despite me (I had gone through ahead of him) and a few workers trying to convince him it was okay.  I could tell all the workers were bothered by what happened because I heard a number of them commenting to each other about how the head honcho behaved and I got the impression that this wasn’t an unusual or isolated incident.

Anyway, we got the waiting area with just a short time to wait, and after less than a half hour, boarded the plane.  Just as we were set to take off, the pilot shut down the engines and announced that there was a mechanical problem, so we waited another two hours for it to be fixed.  During that time, it gave us a chance to appreciate what good seats we were assigned.  Our plane was three rows wide, with each section having three seats.  We were assigned the last three center rows at the very end of the plane, with ds18 assigned his own seat several rows ahead of us.  The kids were disappointed that we didn’t have any window seats because they were looking forward to the views, but after we took off we saw that the very last two seats in the plane across from us were empty, so the kids moved over there and took turns sitting next to the window.

Ds18 happened to have an empty seat on each side of him, so initially I moved two kids up to him.  But when we took off and we saw the two vacant seats close to us, he moved back to be with us.  The seats were perfect – we were close the bathrooms, and because it was the back of the plane, there weren’t people passing from in front and behind us, only in front.  So it allowed the kids a little more leeway to move around during the quiet hours when most of the passengers were sleeping.  Since it was an afternoon flight, none of us slept more than two or three hours, but the flight went very smoothly.  The littles were angels and the older kids were all very helpful in taking care of younger siblings.

After almost twelve hours on the plane but less than ten hours of flying time, we saw the view of Israel quickly coming into focus.

Avivah