The Olson's Asian Adventure

Houston was a nice stop.  We have been dreaming of Culver’s cheeseburgers, Chuy’s jalapeno sauce, our Church, and our close Houston friends for months and it finally arrived.  The Resendez graciously opened their home to us for the week and our tenants offered “our house” to us for Christmas morning since they were also away for the holidays.  Everything was perfect.  We arrived on Christmas Eve with only one detail left open (a pretty big one too).  What would our car rental look like?  For the entire trip so far we had used miles to pay for everything; flights from NYC to Knoxville, Knoxville to STL, STL to Houston, and a car rental in STL… But in Houston we needed a car rental for 12 days with a pick-up in Houston and a drop in Dallas… and, it needed to be big enough to handle a bunch of luggage.   By all accounts, this was going to be spendy (1500 to 2000 usd) and that gave me nausea.  However, we found National rental and signed up...

Our second stop was in St. Louis.  We debated a bit where to stay (Mom’s or Ericka’s), but landed on Mom’s for convenience.  We arrived pretty late on Tuesday night and Mom/Frank met us at the airport.  They were super helpful throughout the entire trip when taking us back and forth to the airport and setting up their house for us.  This stop was a little different because the first 2 days we didn’t have much of an agenda.  This was good as we had several last minute Christmas things to finish and it was nice just to hang out a bit.  We did a bit of shopping, eating, and movie watching.  Kids seemed to enjoy it… and so did Amanda and I.  I am sure we will go through different phases in our life and “long” for the busy days, but right now every minute of our life is scheduled and accounted for… so for now, a couple of “no-schedule” days is cherished. St. Louis was bracketed by three main family events; the Old St. Charles Christmas even...

My Dad and Kay moved to Tennessee about one month before we moved to China and the timing just didn’t give us a chance to see their new place.  So, for Christmas we made a point to visit.  What a treat.  My Dad has been talking about living in a log cabin as long as I can remember… and he finally got it.  They found a great place in the Smokey Mountains and it is just perfect.  The kids quickly declared it to be a “cool” place and really had a great time just hanging out at the house.  It’s away from main street, but still 30 minutes from a major airport.  It is on a nice piece of land with a decent view that you can explore without worrying about neighbors… It’s pretty easy to get to (well actually, better than “pretty easy” – It is a massive improvement to Gillette WY) and it has tons of stuff nearby to explore.  We loved it. Grandpa and Grandma were excited to see us and we were excited to see them as well.  This was our firs...

Make no mistake, 14hr trips are hard… But, after you do 1-2-3 of them, they get easier.  Our flight left later in the day so we didn’t to break the alarm clock with an early start.  We did have plenty of bags, but my United Airlines status gives us a lot of freedom here and it was less than when we moved to China.  At this point, travelling with 15-20 bags is easy.  😊 We did book business class again… and, it really helps.  It just gives you more space allows you to sleep a bit easier, and dampens the jet lag a bit.  The family knows how to fly now… the kids can navigate security, immigration, and customs pretty well.  They all chip in with the bags and know their roles.  So for most, I would say a 14hr flight would be horrible… but, for this family, no big deal. We arrived in Newark around the same time that we left… yes, this is weird, 14hr flight, 14hr time difference…. Leave at 6pm on Saturday and arrive at 6pm on Saturday… ...