U.S. Week One

It's been a year since we did the trip from one side of the planet to the other, and I have not missed it one bit.  Our flight left KL at 2:45am, so I was hoping we would get some sleep, but the flight to Doha was seven hours long, and they managed to wake us up three times to feed us, so no one got much sleep.  That meant that by the time we landed in Doha, we were all loopy, tired, and hungry.  Luckily, one of the first things we saw when we got into the main terminal was a Harrods Tea Room.  The girls were intrigued by the giant teddy bear outside, but I was going in no matter what because I saw comfortable seats and tea pots.

The girls studied the menu a bit skeptically, but once we got settled, they agreed that it was a lovely place.

Vivian has officially become a tea drinker, so we split several pots of tea.  I teased her that she's so fancy, she puts BOTH pinkies up.

It was about 6am local time, and breakfast seemed in order.  I got myself eggs benedict, which was delicious.

I wasn't sure what to get the girls, so I ordered something called a braffle.  There was no description, but I figured it would be waffles.  I was a bit worried when it showed up, and I realized that there was one plain waffle, but the other one had egg, cheese, and turkey on it.

The girls were brave enough to try it, and they both decided it was absolutely delicious.  Vivian even ate the whole thing!  She was so enamored with it, that she took several photos of it as she went.

Elena was also enthusiastic about it, but her stomach is not quite as big, so while she ate most of it, she couldn't quite finish the whole thing.  It was a really nice way to spend our layover though, and hopefully we'll be able to go there again on our way back home.  The one stressful part was that the departures screens were not showing gates more than an hour ahead of time, and so we didn't know where our next flight was leaving from.  We finally had to go and ask at the information desk.  For an airport that is competing to be the best in the world, that seems like a pretty major oversight.

Despite the slight bump, we made it to our flight just fine, and then proceeded to be on that plane for 14 hours.  It was rough.  Vivian's nose started running and didn't stop the whole time, and Elena hit that point of exhaustion where she refused to fall asleep, and then she had a meltdown that she wanted to get off the plane.  The flight attendant came to the rescue on that one, and asked if Elena wanted to come to the back to help her set up snacks.  That was enough of a diversion to get her back on track, thank goodness.  She did fall asleep, finally, for the last couple hours of the flight, and then she was bright and chirpy for our arrival in Virginia.

Vivian and I were not quite as bright and chirpy, but we were excited to be off the plane, and the first thing we got to do when we arrived at my parents' house was hold my sister's new babies, which made it all worth it.

Viv and I crashed pretty early, but Elena kept going, solving puzzles with my mom and talking nonstop, until my mom finally put her to bed.  We were all up bright and early the next morning though, thank you jet lag.

My sister had taken the day off and brought the babies back to my parents' house for more admiration.  Elena insisted on holding both her new cousins.

I had a lot of fun trying to get tummy time pictures of the babies.

But Elena made sure that I understood that as cute as the babies are, I still belong to her.

We did dinner the next few nights at my sister's house, which let the babies be in their element, while we gave them lots of love.

The girls have also been enjoying the great weather here, which has been warm, but not too hot.

Elena and my dad even worked on a gardening project.  They planted some apple seeds.  We'll see how that goes . . .

For most of our summers in the States, I make really detailed plans, but this summer, I left things pretty open to figure out as we go along.  Vivian had a pressing item though, she really wanted to go to IHOP and get pancakes with strawberry syrup, so that was one of our first outings.  She was not disappointed.

Viv and I also went to Barnes and Nobles.  Elena didn't come with us for that trip, but we picked out El Deafo for her, and she has read it several times already.

We also got to Guapo's for lunch, which was delicious, and my dad took the girls to see the new Lightyear movie.  When Viv and I were out shopping, we couldn't resist getting happy meals for her and Elena.  The toys were from the Lightyear movie, and they were both very pleased.

After lunch, we drove to Maryland to visit some of our D&D friends.  They have a lovely house on a big piece of land, and Elena especially was thrilled to play with their two big dogs.

They took us to a gaming and comic books store, which the girls really liked, and then to a nearby state park to walk both the kids and the dogs.

Elena got a little fussy though, so we didn't stay too long.  Back at our friends' house, they taught Vivi how to play magic,

and Elena got to sit in the DM's chair which blew her mind a little.

All the fresh air did the girls good, because they inhaled dinner.  Vivian had two burgers and Elena had a burger and a hot dog.  The hot dog disappeared in under five minutes, which is a record for her.  She's usually a very slow eater.

Since our D&D games tend to go late, we had planned to spend the night, and they set us up with three separate sofa beds, so that the girls wouldn't attack me in the middle of the night.

The next morning they fed us a delicious breakfast, which the girls burned off by playing with the dogs some more.

Eventually, we headed back to Virginia, but hopefully we can go see them one more time before we head back to Malaysia. 

The next day it rained off and on all day, so we didn't do very much.  We did manage to make a trip to the library to renew my library card and check out some books, so then we had rainy day reading supplies.  This morning though, it was sunny and cool.  Vivian is at a friend's house, so Elena and I went for a walk to the playground to enjoy the weather.  We're still getting up pretty early, so we had the playground all to ourselves for quite a while.  She had a blast.

We've been here a week. We seem to mostly be over jet lag, and we've gotten to see friends and do lots of the things on our list.  We miss Jeff a lot, but I'm sure the summer will go fast if we keep busy, which is what we plan to do.