The way there

We have returned! It was the loveliest trip home and because we packed so many wonderful things into our two week visit to Scotland, I'm planning on writing a series of short posts on each.

On Sunday the 5th we arose at around 3:30am. I thought the boys would be a disaster waking them up at that time in the morning, but both were strangely cheerful...fine with me! Ryan's sister, Callie, had come on Saturday and took us to the airport. We arrived and actually had quite a bit of time to kill before our plane boarded. Thankfully they had a t.v near our gate showing kids programes, so Jack was plenty satisfied...he really likes to watch his morning cartoons.

Our first fight was just under 5 hours. Both boys were pretty tired by the time we got on the plane and conked out just after we took off. Jack loved the take off, although his ears bothered him quite a bit until he zonked out. Peter slept for about 2 1/2 hours on this flight, but was still behaving himself and manageable for the remainder of the time. We only had an hour and a half in the Philadelphia airport, so we let them play in this pretty cool 'Please touch museum' that was also close to our gate until boarding time.
The second flight to Glasgow was just under 6 hours...not bad I thought before we took off....oh how wrong I was. Jack was amazing...REALLY amazing. Peter, however, was a living nightmare. He looks so cute and innocent in this picture below...he's good at deceiving people like that..ha.
He only slept for about an hour at the start of those 6 hours and then he was non-stop into EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE for remainder of the time. Then just as we were about to land the kid conked out again....hmmm. I hadn't had a single wink of sleep and by the time we landed in Glasgow the tears began to flow. I was so grateful to be home, but more grateful to get off that plane. We arrived at 7am(Scotland time) Monday 6th. My family were all waking up to start their day and all we wanted to do was go to bed. As hard as we tried to hold off and go to bed when we should, none of us managed and we each took extremely long naps throughout the day. Here's Peter meeting my brother, Daniel for the first time. Daniel had never met either of my boys before because he was on his mission each time I was over with Jack.
Even when we'd wake Jack up from taking a nap he'd end up this like after a few minutes...poor kid.
Later in the evening my grandparents came over for a delicious dinner and they brought a fun 'Thomas the Tank Engine' cake for Jack and Peter.
That first night both boys had a rough time adjusting to their new time schedule, but that's jet-lag for you....it took about 3 days for them to really get on Scotland time. The second day we were so excited to see my brother, John, his wife Margaret, and my two gorgeous wee nephews, Samuel(3) and Isaac(almost 2).

Here's Jack giving Samuel(below) his belated birthday present, he had just turned 3 the week before we came.

The wee cousins got on really well and to be honest that was one of the hardest things for me to see...it's so sad that they don't get to see them all the time; I know they would be the best of friends and they were while we were there.