DAY 1&2 - We're off to Dubai

ALL ABOUT OUR TRIP

Day 1- April 14th- We're Leaving

The kids were napping while Scott and I got our last things packed. This is the precious picture I took of them holding hands right before we woke them up to go to the airport.

We are packed and heading for our flight that left at 6:30pm to Atlanta.

When we were saying goodbye to the kids they wanted to keep hugging. Brooke said "Mommy will you be back in an hour?" They had no concept of time on how long we would be gone, which is a blessing. Brooke insisted on us taking this balloon that said "it a boy" and Parker wanted us to give Thomas the train to Jonas. We listened and packed the items... oh it was hard leaving them. I knew they were well taken care of but hard to know we would be gone from them for 12 days. We were both full of emotions as we had no idea what to expect on this trip, but we were on our way packed with everything but the kitchen sink.:) 4 huge bags weighing in just less than 50 pounds each. I would have waves of nerves and excitement within minutes of each other. We were finally leaving to get our precious boy. I couldn't stop smiling!

Once to Atlanta we caught our flight to Dubai over night... leaving at 9:45 PM We were suppose to sleep but I couldn't just to much to think about. The man that sat next to me didn't move... he fell asleep the minute we got on the flight and woke up when we landed. Crazy, only getting up twice to use the restroom. It was a 15 hour flight and I was restless. Scott and I caught up on about 3 movies each. It was a long flight but not bad. We arrived into Dubai, United Arab Emirates at 9 PM Thursday.

It was hot and very dry desert weather. We arrived at the hotel starving so we had a late dinner, buffet style .. they had every kind of food you can imagine, Mexican, Chinese, India, Thai, Middle Eastern, Mongolian, Sushi. It was a mix of everything that filled our hunger... then before we hit the sack, we did a video chat with our kiddos. Little did we know, this would be our last video chat of the trip...

The next day, Friday April 16, we explored Dubai because our flight to Ethiopia didn't leave until around 5 PM. It was a VERY modern and clean city with loads of construction. Tall skyscrapers were going up on every block. Dubai is known for the tallest building in the world which we had to see since it was just completed a few months ago. It's called the Burj Dubai and it's some 500 feet taller than any other structure in the world.

Below: This is a hotel resort that was next to the mall and tallest building Burj Dubai

The Dubai Mall is one of the largest malls in the world (4th largest to be exact). It has an aquarium with a unique variety of fish. This mall also had a ice skating rink and over 1,200 stores. It was amazing and we walked around it for about 3 hours. One of the most interesting things about walking around the mall was the people. You would see ladies dressed in their traditional Muslim black gowns covering their entire body, with only a sliver of their eyes showing...but they would be sporting a Gucci purse and Jimmy Choo shoes. As Scott and I would say "Great People Watching!!!"

Here are a few videos we took .. sorry they are a little shaky

We are headed to the airport for our next stop Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA