A long travel day and arrival in Thailand

For once, I feel like things weren't down to the wire when we set off for a trip. We had everything ready and even left a half an hour before our target time.

 A little liquid refreshment to get me through the next 24 hours. I needed it!

We had plenty of time to eat lunch at SFO and had time to spare at the gate.

The gate agent was kind enough to take our family portrait :)

When we got on the plane, the kids were excited to see that each of them had their own screen and promptly plugged in.

So excited to be on an airplane!

In fact they were so excited that they had a hard time sleeping in spite of the 10 hour flight to Tokyo ahead of us. Jad fell asleep midway through the flight, though I made the rookie mistake of trying to move him and woke him up. But they all ended up falling asleep by the end of the flight. 

Once in Tokyo, we had a 5 hour layover. We wandered around the airport and found a Pokemon stuffie vending machine. The kids were exhausted and wouldn't stop fighting with each other, and since we were exhausted, we parked them in front of the laptop so Nik and I could alternate taking naps. Jad was so tired that he attached himself to Nik specifically and wouldn't even let me comfort him. How did he become such a daddy's boy?

Jad loves his cream pan!

In Japan, there are vending machines for everything.. even Pokemon

Exhausted daddy and Jaddy

The last leg of our travel day was a 6 hour red eye to Bangkok. Again the kids were excited to have a screen in front of them, though we made them turn it off once we took off and they eventually fell asleep. Nik guessed that he had 30 minutes of sleep over the course of that 24 hour long travel day.. I think I did slightly better.. 2 hours?

We had a whole row to ourselves. Nice, but Kai and Sora wouldn't stop bugging each other

Success!

We successfully met up with Chris at the airport and the kids were so excited to see him. We eventually met up with Nik's uncle and cousin, and his parents.

Nik's Dad drove us to Rayong. It was a long drive which was even longer since they were doing construction along the highway. I need to get used to "out of the States" driving standards since driving on the shoulders is a norm and sometimes lane markers are just helpful suggestions. The kids were ok, but they woke up halfway through the drive and that also made things really difficult. We eventually made it to Rayong and had breakfast with Nik's family. The kids really enjoyed the large koi in the backyard.

Grandpa, Grandma and koi fish

On a scooter with Granduncle

After a long, long day we were all really exhausted. So once we arrived at our cute little beach bungalow, everyone passed out for a well-deserved nap. We will spend the next few days in Rayong before heading back to Bangkok, so I will try to keep things updated in the meanwhile.