Journey Home!

we began our journey home easily enough with 9 bags! pretty good considering we crammed hundreds of books into our bags and presents for all the neighbors! Our first layover was in Frankfurt, Germany. We got to our gate to head to Turkey and heard an announcement that the flight was overbooked! Tim LOVES to hear this! So this time i let him volunteer us since our connecting flight in Turkey wasn't for 2 days! So we did it...and we got 2,000 Euro and a free 10 hour stay in the airport! My favorite was the latter! We took this picture for Tim's Dad...impressive!

We also got 75 Euro to blow on a meal of our choice! So we included all the fun beverages we wanted! We were so tired here though...seriously could barely keep my eyes open.

we also let the kids buy a present in the airport to entertain themselves while we were stuck there. I wasn't feeling adventurous enough to go out into Germany.

We finally made it to Turkey at 2 am and got checked into a nasty hotel at 4 am. we crashed there for 6 hours and then moved to a new hotel... the Dong Yang...a Korean hotel in the middle of Turkey...interesting.

this is the first place we stayed at! I DO NOT recommend it!

We spent the afternoon cruising Istanbul!

We searched for the perfect ice cream spot and finally found this one. the guy serving it does a bunch of silly tricks with the ice cream and wowed us all...

he tried to give me the entire batch

and then grabbed my hand and wouldn't let me have the ice cream. clever! made us all laugh until he announced the price. you should have seen tim's face! he said NO! you can't steal our money! Then began a long and heated debate between the two of them about the price of our ice cream cones. the ice cream guy got ticked and tim tried to give our ice cream back. meanwhile it's melting all over us...i am saying between clenched teeth...give the guy the money. it was ridiculous though. he wanted 37 turkish leira for ice cream. tim tried to hand him 15. i finally threw another 5 at him and we ran away. Tim ran back and gave him back his ice cream and told him it tasted terrible. which it did...but he made me and the kids eat more of ours. finally it was a total disaster melting all over us. tim was mad at me. i was mad at tim. the kids were all a little shocked and completely sticky. so we threw them all away and bought water and washed ourselves off. tim and i made up and we headed back to the Dong Yang!

we snapped a few pictures on this bridge on our walk back.

tim is happier...although still without ice cream!

we crashed into 3 twin beds all together and slept most of the night. annie and toby woke up at midnight and played for an hour or so until we forced them back to sleep! all in all it was another adventurous journey home!