No Rest for the Weary: Our Trip Home and an Easter Market

We had a really rough trip home.  I suspected it might be so since they had been in grandparent heaven for the last month.  They had no chores, no responsibilities at all, save for math homework and memory work.  As is usually the case, the littlest ones don't have to eat healthy on trips and I certainly let a lot more go in order for  myself to have a vacation of sorts.  And what do you get for all that?  Some spoiled kids that don't travel nearly as well as the kids I brought with me from Germany to the states.  

We had the same seating arrangements.  The plane had the same movies.  The trip was an overnight one though so I needed them to sleep some because we would arrive bright and early in the morning.  So I told them they could watch the movies until about 8pm Texas time and then they had to read and try to sleep.  I handed out Benedryl a little before that to help them out a little bit.  (Thanks, Ann, for the great idea!)  It worked pretty well.  Drew was the first to drift off, Hannah following.  Judah was having some problems and throwing some fits.  I had to take him to the bathroom and have a talk at one point.  I made Isaac switch with Genna, and Judah sat closer to me since he was being a stinker.  Isaac fell asleep next, and then Bobby.  Judah started trying to just turn the TV back on, and would throw a fit when Genna would turn it back off.  He laid down in the two seats between me and Genna, but he would start kicking as I was trying to keep Bobby asleep.  Genna was reading, but I asked her to help out a little more and she said she didn't know what to do.  Funny how one month of not helping out with little ones at all makes one forget how to do it.  I told her to try singing to him, and it worked like a charm.  He was out within five minutes.  Then Genna was the last to drift off.  

Bobby fell asleep in the Ergo and at first I thought I had it made, but he was waking up about every 45 minutes in a rage.  He'd cry and fight me for about 5 minutes and then just pass out again.  Poor guy did this the rest of the flight until the lights came on and breakfast was served.  He probably would have been better in a car seat, but that just wasn't an option this time.  So I didn't get to sleep at all.  I nodded off once for maybe 10 minutes, but that was it for me.

We all took a nap that afternoon and went to the vigil Mass in our village that evening.  Bobby couldn't stay awake for that and slept through it.  We all went to bed around 10:30 or 11pm and no one woke me up all night long.  We were able to sleep in the next morning, and we did until about 10am.  Never in the history of all our overseas trips have I had a baby, younger than 2 years old, sleep through the night the first night.  Unbelievable!  It was God's gift to me after a tough flight.

Brian had promised to get up with him if he did have a hard night, but he didn't so he was off the hook.  I promised to go to this Easter market that was in Saint Wendel if I could have a full night's sleep and sleep in.  So, off we went!

Waiting on their gelato!

We've been to St. Wendel for many markets and never had we ventured in the church.  It's not too big and we didn't know there was anything there.  However, this time we ran into a pilgrim (wearing a scallop shell,) and he told us that the church had St. Wendel's relics and had a one of a kind ceiling with coat of arms on it.  So we stopped in on our way out of the city.