We are here!

Hi everyone, I made Kenji let me post this time, I never thought I`d have to fight him for it, I thought this would be my thing, but that`s good! Get ready for more details then you ever wanted now that I`m taking over! We made it safely here, as many of you have heard already. We had a smooth trip I`d say. Any fears we had about the boys and travelling etc, were unfounded-Sage and Kai were great. Lucas did good too, just fussed some on the long flight since we made him stay in his carseat alot. The seatbelt sign was on for most of the flight, although we had very little turbulence, thankfully. The older boys carried their own weight cheerfully in the airports and didn`t complain, I`m glad they saw it as a great adventure! Kai only started saying when are we going to land, the last 3 or 4 hours of the long flight and I was able to quell that by playing with him and convincing him to take a nap with the rest of us for the last few hours. Sage made us shake our heads by enjoying the movie `Cats and Dogs` 3.5 times thru and complaining when they shut it off before landing. And he laughed every time! Thank God for inflight entertainment! Those little tv screens made life much easier for all of us, Lucas even enjoyed watching without earphones. Lucas also found a black dog similar looking to Uncle Eric`s black lab Gunner(who he loves), in the inflight magazine. He spent many minutes saying Gun-Gun and kissing him. I tore the picture out for him to keep! He said pairplane numerous times during the trip. Kai was very excited by the airplanes and airports, and the people movers, the first flight was nice because the older two boys got window seats and it wasn:t such a big plane so they saw alot of the ground. The worst moment of the trip, which wasn`t bad really, was collecting our myriads of luggage in Tokyo to go thru customs. We were so glad that things have changed there and Kenji was allowed to go thru immigration with us in the new family line. Before I had to take the kids and go thru the foreigner line by ourselves, which inevitibly was way long. We did not have to wait at all! Yeah! and then after collecting our two luggage carts full of luggage and trying to carry the other bags that wouldn`t fit and Lucas when we got to the customs line, they just asked a few questions and mercifully waved us on thru, God is good! We did not have hardly any waiting time on our layovers by the time our work was done, and no delays or trouble. My favorite thing was that we had two sets of 3 seats to ourselves on the long flight, which made for lots of space and no worrries with other passengers. God answered all our and your travelling prayers and for that we are thankful. Noone was sick and the only sufferers were Kenji and I because of our colds, our ears hurt us with landing especially. But that is definitely bearable, since the kids didn`t seem to have any trouble. They slept a decent amount thruout. We were very happy to not have any trouble landing in snowy Sapporo, much to the boys excitement. The boys` tiredness abated upon seeing a gigantic fish tank as soon as we entered the airport with a fish with eyes the size of your fist! There were two boys age 6 and 3 also on that flight who I pointed out to Sage, were bilingual, see how cool that is, hint, hint! Sage enjoyed watching an cartoon DVD in English in Kenji`s younger sister`s husband`s car on the way to Jiji and Baba`s house(what the kids call Grandma and Grandpa here!). He laughed and laughed the whole way while Lucas, Kai and I all slept soundly, it finished up just as we drove in the drive. Very thoughtful of Shunsuke!