It's so good to be home!

We made it home Saturday night after a very long journey. We left Moscow early Saturday morning as I needed to go to the Delta ticket office and pay the difference in my fares for coming back early. Well, I was absolutely insistent that we get bulkhead seating because I did not want a repeat of the nightmare flight we had taken 3 days earlier and this flight would be even longer. My translator told me to go ahead and ask the cashier at the Delta office to secure our seats in bulkhead as she felt we had a better chance with him rather than at the ticket counter. Well his first response was absolutely not, they were all taken and and none were available. I was nearly in tears, I had two very rambunctious kids so I showed him a $100.00 bill and asked again, he shoved it away and again told me no all the while typing into his computer. A few minutes later, lo and behold, suddenly 4 seats became available in bulkhead! and my "gratuity would be greatly appreciated" he told me! Gotta love Russia!

The flight home was much better than the first one, although Gail was not seated in the same row as us and no one would switch places with her. Caroline fell asleep and slept for about 8 of the 12 hour flight and Chase, well he finally fell asleep for about 4 hours of the flight on the floor in front of me. I did dose him with some benadryl which helped a little, but Lord this kid is tough. It took a long time to go thru customs in Atlanta and then immigration, we had about 25 minutes to spare to make our flight to Dallas, but we made it hauling all of our carry on and two kids who's heads are on swivels. I did use these stuffed animal backpack/harnesses most of the trip with the kids especially for Chase as he just will not listen either in Russian or English and I was so afraid of losing him in airports and such; his name Chase, suites him to a "T"! The flight to DFW was pretty uneventful as we all were so tired. I had called the limo service from Atlanta to change our arrival date and time and after calling around, they found a driver with a large SUV to pick us up, not the stretch I had wanted, but at this point I didn't care if we had to pile into a VW bug to get us home. Our luggage didn't make it with us on the flight to DFW but Delta said they would deliver it to my home when it made it on the next flight.

I had had the dog sitter lock the dogs up in my bedroom so they wouldn't scare the children when we arrived home, but the kids heard them barking and started to panic. They did settle down a little when they saw their rooms which they loved and after playing with some of the toys, they had their baths and off to bed and fell asleep; so I thought. I climbed into bed at about 11:00 pm and fell sound asleep only to be woken up at about 3:00 am with blood curdling screams coming from Caroline's room and then Chase's room. I ran in there and they we're both screaming and sobbing terrified of the dogs that they had yet to even meet, at the same time the phone is ringing with the courier to deliver the luggage (3:00 am!!) I'm thinking this is ridiculous and finally picked them up and put them in my bed and moved the dogs to the living room and closed the door. They finally fell back asleep and slept almost the entire day and didn't get up until about 3:00 pm. Gail and I did no less than 14 loads of laundry, we decided if it even touched Russian air, it was going in the wash.

When the kids woke up we talked with them about the dogs and assured them in both Russian and English that the dogs were friendly, would not bite and liked to kiss and lick their fingers and toes. I picked them up one by one and carried them into the kitchen and again the loudest blood curdling screams you have ever heard! They would barely even look at the dogs. Now my dogs are two small terriers and one medium size golden retriever/Shepard mix with very sweet dispositions and have been around children and basically ignore them and sleep on the couches all day. They did calm down some when I sat them on the counter in the kitchen where the dogs could not possibly get to them, but still incredibly scared. Over and over we told them the dogs would not hurt them, they are friendly but not much was working. I put the dogs outside and went out and played and petted them so they could watch thru the window and they seemed somewhat okay with that, but still had no comfort in meeting even the littlest one. We went ahead and left the dogs out and cooked dinner, steak, baked potato and salad which Caroline loved, but unbelievably Chase didn't seem to like the steak. They did love the "drumstick" ice cream cones for dessert though!.

Bedtime last night was another nightmare even with them in my bed and the dogs locked up and nowhere in sight. Caroline finally fell asleep after about 4-5 hours and Chase was up most of the night crying every 30 minutes. I don't know what to do about this situation. There has got to be one. If anyone has any ideas on how to make them more comfortable or even tolerate the dogs I would welcome any and all suggestions.

Thanks, even though this is hard, it's sooooo good to be home!
Love,
Jane