Back in the USA!

We traveled back to the United States on June 12th 2009. We left Japan at 5:20 June 12th and arrived in Peoria like 5:30 that same day. Harry unfortunately had to travel to Seattle to process out of the Navy so we were on different flights back to the US and he stayed in Seattle for about 6 days, then joined us in Peoria. The girls did well on the trip and we had 4 seats for the 3 of us which was awesome. I did end up bringing Julia's car seat and it came in handy for her to sleep but it was great to have it in a spare seat. In all my travels back and fourth to Japan to take or not to take the car seat has occupied many hours of my preparation for the trip. The 11 hour flight went well with me watching one movie while the girls slept and the rest of the time watching the in flight monitor on the TV to see how much longer we would be on the plane. We arrived in Chicago and I had to claim all our bags, go through customs, with one tired almost 5 year old in tow and one 18 month old sleeping in her car seat in a stroller. Stating that going through customs was horrible would have been an understatement. We then traveled though the airport and finally found our way to the other terminal (there are better directions in English at Narita than at O hare). By the way this all took place with only 1 hour until our next flight was to take off. We made our difficult way through security ran towards our gate only to find out half way there that the gate had changed and we needed to run back the other way. We were the last ones on the plane and I couldn't have been happier when the doors closed the wheels were up and we were on the final leg of our journey.
We were welcomed home by Grandpa and Margie, enjoyed a nice dinner at Aggitucci's and then went home to our new place, the Short house. The Short family was kind enough to offer up there house to us to stay while we where house hunting and they remained in Japan for the baseball season. We lived there for 6 weeks and it was the greatest thing anyone did for us when we were coming back. We can never thank them enough for the kindness of opening up their house to us.