First Leg: Seattle to Frankfurt

This is it, January 7th 2011, a long awaited day had finally arrived.  I began the morning with my usual last minute bustling around the house trying to get everything done before I left for 2 whole months.  I am glad to say that I got most of what I set out to do done.  I put the finishing touches on my packing and held my breath as I weighed my bags one last time to see if they were under the 50lb limit mark.  They were but just barely and for that I was glad.  I loaded up the car with all my gear, bid farewell to my lovely Parkland home, and then set off to the airport driven by the lovely Gretchen Bradley and accompanied by little Boaz.  Despite leaving a few minutes past our ideal departure time, we arrived at the airport on time.  I bid goodbye to Gretchen and Boaz and made my way into the airport with my massive amount of luggage.  I held my breathe once again as I weighed my bags on the official scale.  I passed with my checked luggage, but had to re-arrange my carry-on luggage.  Who knew there was a limit to the weight of your carry-on? Yup, 8kg each, just in case they hit someone on the head when you are removing them from the overhead bin.  LOL Anyway, I was glad once I was all checked in and was able to take a breather while we waited for the other girls to get checked in as well.  Then we made our way through security pretty easily.  Everyone was bright eyed and enthusiastic about the journey we were embarking on.  Once through security, we found our gate and proceeded to take many pictures and give ourselves time for the reality of the trip to set in.  We boarded our plane and enjoyed a long but comfortable 10 hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany.  Lufthansa Airline was amazing.  The crew was friendly, the seats were spacious, the food was reasonably good, and the entertainment was amazing.  There were min tv screens on the back of every seat with individual head sets.  I enjoyed watching Life As We Know It which turned out to be an even better movie than I originally anticipated.  It was difficult to get rest on this flight however due to the fact that it was the afternoon in our home timezone and we were not very tired yet and full of excitement.