On to Moscow!

Well the first thing out of Harry's mouth on Sunday was "Sem-al-yote" meaning airplane. Unfortunately the thought Irina, Vova & Ksusha were coming with us, and refused to believe otherwise. At the airport, we checked in early and headed to a small cafe to get a bite to eat before our 2:00 p.m. flight. There wasn't much the boys would have eaten so I got them both a hot dog wrapped in dough, along with an apple juice. The rest of us just had some tea. Vova pointed to Harry's juice and said, "Sok"? (Juice) and Harry said, "Nyet - Apple juice".. Yep, he's learning.

Anyway, they ate the hot dog quickly, and then Harry wiped his mouth with his napkin and rattled off something I didn't catch in Russian. Irina & Vova cracked up laughing. What he said was, "Okay, I'm done, now I'm ready to get on the airplane!" Too cute! This changed minutes later however during our very tearful good-byes. It was only then that Harry realized they really weren't coming. He was a bit teary at that point, but once inside the gate area, he spotted the planes outside and he was a different kid!

Maybe the best part of our flight was boarding. Here in Russia, you exit the building, take a shuttle bus to the tarmac where it's a free for all race to the portable staircase that leads to the airplane steps! As is the custom here - and yes, despite the cattle-call type atmosphere, a woman with kids is allowed to board immediately and everyone lets you by. So everyone waits while I climb the steps and inside the plane. Harry happily greets each and every crew member as he entered, and promptly sat himself down in the first row of the Business Class seats! He was a bit annoyed when I told him to keep walking to the cheap seats! He was very excited when the attendant gave him and Skip their own Aeroflot backpack filled with goodies. They both put their bright orange Aeroflot baseball hats on, buckled up, and waited patiently. Once we took off, Harry could hardly contain himself. He was really good the first half, but then got tired and cranky. Unfortunately (for me mostly) he never slept, but was fine for the landing. He LOVED it! Once inside the terminal we had to wait about 20 minutes for our bags and then we made our way out through security.

Now I had told them there would be a driver with a sign with "Holmes' on it, and since Skip could read now, his job would be to find the man with our name. Of course the man was Mike - hiding his face behind the sign. When Skip realized it was Mike he ran and hugged him, and Harry, who generally isn't a hugger, yelled "Poppa" and ran right to him, hugging him tightly! It was SO worth my surprising them! THEY WERE THRILLED!

As for our Moscow experience thusfar, I'll have to save that for tomorrow! I'm beat after a day of sightseeing! I'll get some pictures of our flight up soon too! This 5-hour time difference is killin' me!