Smooth as Sandpaper

Before I get to the good stuff I first have to say that blogging was almost a challenge. I am at a cafe where there is wireless internet and when I went to google and then blogger it was all in Norwegian. Luckily I found the place to switch it to English or it would have been a challenge. We have been here 3 days but this is my first chance to get on the internet so there are several posts that I drafted offline and they are kind of long. Sorry.

Well we have arrived in Oslo and are in our new apartment but it was quite a journey getting here. The journey went as smoothly as sandpaper – in other words, not too smooth.
Joshua and the boys arrive at our house at about 9:30 to unload their stuff, help out and load their van with our stuff. Tracey arrived a little later after clearing their stuff from Ray and Melissa’s house. They helped keep Katherine out of my way until Nana arrived at 10:30 so I could do last minute stuff like pack our carry on bags since we were too tired last night to do it.

We have a total of 4 checked suitcases and six carry on bags. Our carry on bags include the stroller and the car seat (Katherine has her own seat for the flight, not sitting on my lap) as well as a bag with both laptops, a bag with cameras, diapers, etc, my purse (really large) and Sam’s backpack. It was a logistical challenge to plan how to carry on all that we needed.
Our itinerary was supposed to be: 11:45 am arrive at DFW to check in 2 hours before our flight (international flight policy).

1:45 pm fly from DFW to Newark
6:30 pm arrive in Newark
8:15 pm fly from Newark to Oslo
9:50 am arrive in Oslo
Total travel time was 13 hours. Then we were going to go through customs, get our bags, take a taxi and arrive at the apartment.

Here was our actual itinerary:
11:45am arrive at DFW to check in 2 hours early. No troubles checking in. Super power hungry TSA worker at the security check in. Not fun since we had the previously mentioned 6 carry on bags as well as a toddler. Luckily Katherine was quite content to be carried on my back and they did not make me take her off to go through security.
12:00pm discovered that our flight was delayed until 2:30. It would cut our layover shorter but we were assured it would be no problem. We ate lunch and played on the playground. DFW only has 2 play areas and luckily one of them was only 3 gates from our gate.

2:00pm We went to board our delayed plane and right as we got there, they announced that it was going to be delayed another hour. Apparently there was a back up of planes on the runway and the pilot decided he did not want to sit on the runway in the heat with no AC. I appreciated that but we were frustrated because now our flight was 1:45 late and we only had a 1:45 layover in Newark so obviously we were going to miss our flight. Sam left me, Katherine and all of our carry on baggage at the playground and went back outside security to the ticket desk to rebook our flights and change our itinerary. Again, I was so glad that the playground was so close.
3:30pm Sam finally arrives back with our new itinerary. At least we don’t have to spend the night in Newark or delay our trip by a day. It goes through Chicago and London before arriving in Oslo. They assure us that our baggage has also changed itinerary and even called the other airline to notify them of our change. Our new flight leaves in 45 minutes from a different terminal so we have to hurry to get on the shuttle to go to terminal A. After we get off the tram I ask Sam if we should take the elevator or escalator with all our bags and he realizes he left the carseat on the tram. He ran and got back on it right as the doors closed. I waited at the station while he rode to the next stop, changed directions and came back. I am so glad we noticed right then or it would have been a huge hassle and delay.
Katherine had not taken a nap up to this point. We thought we had a great itinerary where she would nap on our first flight and sleep for the night on our second one. With all the delays there was just nowhere to sleep. She finally fell asleep on my back about 10 minutes before we had to board the plane. What rotten luck.

Sorry these photos are not oriented right. I am not on my computer with my editing softward and I am running out of time at the internet cafe. I will fix it later.

4:15 pm Fly from DFW to Chicago. Katherine does not sleep at all. She stays in her car seat about half the time but really enjoys kicking the seat in front of her, which I know was frustrating to the lady in front of her. There was nothing I could do. Telling her to stop made it more fun for her. She ended up in my lap.
6:35pm Arrive in Chicago. Luckily we only had to go 3 gates over so we had time to eat, change a diaper, etc. They had a Corner Bakery in their airport food court so I was very happy. Katherine did not really want to sit still and eat so we ate in shifts. One of us ate while the other chased her around the airport. We don’t usually do things like that but we thought it was a good way to get her energy out before our long overseas flight.
8:15pm Fly from Chicago to Oslo. We were in the bulkhead row, which gave us more room and allowed us to put Katherine’s car seat rear facing which meant that it was more reclined and hopefully would allow for more sleeping on her part. It also meant Sam and I had more legroom which was nice. The other 2 people in our row were a mom and 16 month old girl heading back to London from the states. Her daddy is in the Air Force and they were home visiting grandma. Katherine and Addison had fun together and it was nice having another mom and baby on our row rather than some business man that would be annoyed by a toddler. Katherine slept but not as early or as much as I would have liked. She only slept 5 hours. Remember, this is after having no nap and this was her entire nights sleep. Amazingly she remained in good spirits. I only got about 3 hours of sleep. Between keeping Katherine up and eating and all that I was not able to get much sleep.

9:40am Arrive at London Heathrow. This airport is HUGE. We went through a long maze of tunnels to get to the tram to take us from our terminal to another. Then the bus drove what seemed like 10 minutes before we had to go through another maze to reach the terminal. There we had enough time to get a cup of coffee, check email and get a few numbers we needed, change diapers and look at the Harrods shop which had lots of stuffed animals to entertain Katherine.
12:45 pm Fly from London to Oslo. At this point we are so ready to be there. Katherine is doing great but is so tired and fidgety. She was between her seat and my lap the entire flight. I got her to fall asleep nursing while we were waiting to take off but the flight attendant had me put on a infant seatbelt adaptor and that process woke her up. She never fell back asleep. I was impressed thought that they had the infant seatbelt adaptor. It basically straps to the mom’s seatbelt and then around the infant. In the US they do not have anything like that. I guess they fear that if they did it would imply that it is safe 100% of the time and if there was a problem once they would be sued. They don’t want to risk it. Then she fell asleep while nursing – upon landing. So again, she had horrible timing. After about 10 minutes she woke up while we were trying to get off the plane.
3:55 Arrive in Oslo! Total travel time Just over 19 hours (from when we were supposed to take off) So we extended our trip by 6 hours. Urghhhh. We gat checked our stroller but at that airport you do not get it at the gate but rather with the rest of the baggage. So, we had to go through the maze without it to use as a dolly for the car seat. We made it through passport control with no problem and Katherine got her first passport stamp. We went to baggage claim which is always a zoo and guess what? NO BAGGAGE CAME! Apparently the assurance that we received that our bags would also change itinerary was not completely true. We went to report it and they were able to look up that our bags were in Chicago still. Apparently they did not know where to send them next. The crazy thing is that they had and hour and a half to move those bags 3 gates! So we filled out our claim forms and were told that they would be delivered to us in the morning. Youwould think that we would have learned our lesson from Nick and Bri who just went to Italy. Bri’s bag never arrived and they still don’t have it. We should have packed a few more essentials in our carry on but we were mainly concerned about having stuff for Katherine. We do have enough diapers to last until Saturday when we will get our bag.
We took a cab into the city to our apartment. We called our landlord, Rolf, to tell him we were on our way but we beat him there. Guess what, little Miss No Nap fell asleep about 2 minutes before we arrived at our apartment. So, we kept her in the car seat and Sam sat with our bags while I hurried to find a place to buy a few essentials before stores closed. I found a body shop to buy shampoo, conditioner and soap and I found a small department store to buy underwear. The rest we will worry about later.
So, getting here has been an adventure but we have arrived.