Back online!

We are here, we arrived safely without any complications, in all it was a very easy flight to make.  I have a lot to blog about, but for now I am going to stick to the trip here, and to let you know that we are all safe and happy to be together again.  

The trip here:  We took a direct flight from Houston to Dubai, which is a 14 hour flight.  We flew with Emirates, which was an awesome airline if you have kids.  This was a wonderful flight for me, but I wouldn't have predicted that, flying that long with a 7 month old.  Lily was wonderful, I couldn't have asked for her to be any better, really.  After take off they brought the bassinet and hooked it up to the bulkhead for me, where, after an hour on the flight I proceeded to put Lily to sleep, and she did sleep, for close to 8 hours, which was awesome, I wish I could say that I slept, but I had a very annoying child behind me that kept banging on his TV screen, or kicking my seat, and the mother did nothing, even after I spoke to him about it, this was the most annoying part.  Lily woke up, ate a little, and played in the seat next to me (the plane was far from full), where she took her morning nap while I ate breakfast.  Then she was awake again, and so was everyone else, people would come by and want to hold her, or play with her, and I just let them while I organized our things and got ready for landing.  It was great how they entertained her.  Landing was fine, but the Dubai airport was a little stressful, not much, but a little because I didn't know how it worked, or where I was going to be meeting Greg.  Over all I ended up just following the crowd, through Passport Control, then through baggage, where I made sure that I didn't need to pick up my bags(this was very important, one person and a baby, 6 checked bags, and only 100$ fee!), which I didn't, and then proceeded through the no claims gate where, finally, we saw Greg.  He had a car waiting, with a car seat and we went to the hotel.  I was tired and hot, but Lily was ready to go for her day, that was the worst night, she was up almost all of it, and Greg and I took turns sleeping.  The next day we woke her up after she had only 2 hours of sleep, and kept her awake for most of the day (her night) with a few naps here and there.  We flew into Bahrain that morning, a totally different airport, tons older than Dubai, and a little scary, thank God I didn't do that one on my own the first time!  Another miracle, all 6 bags made it, and we headed out with a driver to head across to Saudi.  Saudi territory begins halfway across the causeway, so there is a little island built up for border control and customs...  You had to leave Bahrain, and enter Saudi, I had to have my picture taken, and get fingerprinted.  Oh, I forgot probably one of the most comical parts of this trip, Greg had bought me an abaya (the black robe thing women have to wear here) and it was huge, HUGE, you could have fit 5 of me in the thing!  So I had to wear it across the border, until we got into the compound, so i had it all bunched up, trying not to trip over it.  (I now have one that fits, but it was a nice gesture of Gregs to get me one, he didn't have a clue how to buy one)  We got to the Mutlaq compound (the Schumberger compound) and stayed there that night.  This was really long, so I guess I will continue tomorrow.