Our flight over the big pond

All packed up and ready to go!

We loaded our sixteen 70-pound bags in a borrowed trailer and hooked it up to the church van for the trip to the St. Louis airport for our departure to the Philippines. Our church family gathered to send us off with prayer. Then we drove to St. Louis with both sets of parents on Wednesday, October 26 to catch our flight.

After we arrived at the airport, it took more than 2 hours before we were finished checking in all our luggage. Thankfully, we were able to check it clear through to Manila, and not a single bag was even 1/2 a pound overweight (many were 69.5 pounds, and one was 70 pounds on the dot!) As you can see, Mikayla was already tired of waiting.
Once all our luggage was checked in, we were down to just our carryon luggage - which was still a formidable amount of stuff!

The kids looked cute making one last call.
Mikayla and Zach proved to be excellent travelers. They played well together and slept a fair amount. They enjoyed the personal movie screens on the long flight over the ocean.

Ben, on the other hand, spent most of his time doing exactly what this picture depicts. He had a rough trip. He also experienced a slight diaper malfunction in Chicago O'Hare International Airport that resulted in Steve and myself attempting to discreetly scoop up and dispose of several small treasures scattered throughout the waiting area. It was like a treasure hunt, but the treasure was not the kind typically sought after (with good reason!) Thankfully, I don't think anyone noticed OR stepped in anything.

Ben FINALLY dozed off for a couple hours on the long flight. This still did not allow Mom to get any sleep though because he would start to wake up every 2o minutes or so and had to be soothed back to sleep. He sure looked sweet though.

We finally arrived in the Philippines and made it successfully through immigration, luggage collection (we miraculously received all 16 of our bags! Of course, it wasn't until later that we discovered how much of it had broken enroute...), and customs. We were then greeted by a couple of our colleagues here and went out for lunch. Then we started the 2 hour drive (in our new truck!) down to our new house in Lipa City. Needless to say we were all completely exhausted.

Safely in our new home! We thanked our Father for the safe trip - and for the beds that awaited us! We actually did not have water for the first couple days after our arrival (welcome to the Philippines!), but we haven't had too many problems with that since.