Day One

So I want to be sure to document our trip so that I can hopefully turn this blog into a book one day....has anyone done that yet? If you know of a good place to bind your blog send me a comment!



Thursday, July 9th

At 9:00 my mom came over to pack us all into her car and drive us to the airport. I was pretty nervous about leaving Jackson but as I read with him in his morning devotional book I was again reminded of how God has us in his hands and he has worked out every detail.

More than the birds.
Zoe is looking at a pretty little hummingbird. Have you ever seen how fast a hummingbirds wings go back and forth? That keeps it in one place in the air. Then it uses its long beak to suck a sweet drink from flowers. God takes care of the birds and helps them find food because he loves them. But God loves you even more than the birds! So of course God will take care of you, too!
My Bible Verse: Your Heavenly Father feeds the birds. And you know that you are worth much more than the birds. Matthew 6:26

My Prayer: Jesus, you love the birds in the air, So I know you will keep me in your care.



At 10:30 we make it to the airport and say goodbye. Jackson really wanted to ride on the plane but he was happy to be in GiGi's Beemer (BMW, his favorite kind of car). We get all of our bags checked in and they don't even bother to weigh them.....I am so glad that I decided to freak out about that all week. Again, I should just know that God has worked out the details. We sit for a long wait until our 12:45pm flight.

At 1:50pm we arrive in Houston. It was actually a good thing that we had a 4 hour layover since we had to go out of security, get on a tram to search for the emirates ticket counter, then go back through a really long line of security. At 5:00 we finally obtained an emirates boarding pass but were told they were out of hotel vouchers so we needed to get one in Dubai....this made me a little nervous. At 6:00pm we boarded our flight and sat in the bassinet row. Lots of extra foot room in this row but also next to 2 babies! I was hoping to only have to be with a baby on the way home:) They were actually pretty good though. I was really impressed with Emirates as they brought the babies puppets, baby food, a little bag of wipes, lotion, bibs, spoons, and all kinds of stuff. All of the kids on the plane got little backpacks full of toys and crayons and coloring books. They really take care of you. The food was good and the TVs had hundreds of movies, CDs, TV shows and video games. Paul and I played lots of video games on the way there:)




16 hours later we landed in Dubai where it was sometime in the late afternoon but 9 in the morning our time. The Dubai airport is incredible! It looks like Prince will jump out any minute and you will be in the middle of an 1980's pop rock music video. We made it through immigration and obtained our hotel and meal vouchers with no problems and find our way to the hotel shuttle. We walked outside and it was around 6 pm Dubai time and it was 110 degrees. I am used to Texas heat but WOW! it was so hard to breath because it was so hot! We made our way to the hotel, got checked in and went down for some dinner. We were happy to find Chicken Tikka Masala, our very favorite Indian food. Then we went up and talked to Jackson on Skype, took nice hot showers, and went to sleep. However, our room was right next to the elevators and I only heard DING all night long and since this was the Emirates hotel, people arrive at all hours for their layovers.

(Those huge columns actually have glitter all over them and there is about 300 of them in the baggage area. The columns in immigration are shiny silver and are every 10 feet )