“Goodbye winter, helllooo summer!”

Heads up: This is going to be a long one because somehow we went from December 23rd through the 25th in a swift swoop of magic.

Well, we’ve made it- after nearly 30 hours of travel we’re HERE! Last time Adam and I made this trip last year, we spent a few days in Seoul before headed to Bangkok. The biggest lesson learned yesterday was that going from Appleton to Bangkok is no stinkin’ joke. Seriously…wooooooofff.

Our scheduled day of departure was Monday, December 23rd. When I woke up on Sunday morning though there was a not-so-promising forecast that was originally predicted to be a “few tenths of an inch” of ice then snow after that. UGH — after all that’s happened in the last two months, it was going to be the weather that would delay us? Being the slightly nervous Nelly that I am, I immediately reached out to a friend who is a fleet manager for a major airline…if anyone was in a position to give an honest prediction it would be him. Sadly given our forecast, the outlook he gave was not so great.

So, with sheer determination for something we had absolutely no control over, but still wanting to create the best possible scenario for successfully making an early-morning flight (6:20am departure)…we went ahead and booked a hotel room closer to the airport. That way, even if roads were a bit icy in the morning, we just had 2 miles to cover rather than the usual 16 miles from home. It felt ridiculous, but it also gave us an extra half hour to sleep in the morning.

After booking the room, the rest of the day was full of packing, cleaning, celebrating Christmas with my dad, and eating a nice meal. We finally left our house around 8:00pm when my dad gave us a ride to the airport — truthfully, I think he liked this new plan better too because it took the job of driving on icy roads in the morning off his shoulders. From there getting the kiddo to sleep was no small task as she was SO excited and wired. I think she finally fell asleep around 10:30?

It felt like the alarms went off not long after we went to sleep. I immediately checked the forecast, and though there was still a winter weather advisory, things didn’t look too bad and we had no notifications from the airline saying our flight was delayed. Game on! Our 5:00am Lyft from the hotel came right on time and off to the airport we went. IT WAS HAPPENING!

Ya’ll — ATW was so cute all decked out for Christmas. It was also SO full for being such a little airport. We aren’t used to that! Thankfully having global entry served us well there and we were able to swiftly make it through security. The only hiccups were Adam’s new hip (hello giant piece of metal inside the body!) and Miriam’s bag getting searched because of all the little dots that were picked up by the scanner — aka: all of her Tonies with their little magnets in them.

Our first flight to Minneapolis was as smooth as can be! Miriam’s proclamation as we were taking off: “Goodbye winter, helloooo summer!"

Here’s what we realized though: Miriam is being raised to be quite the luxurious and bougie traveler. With two parents who have the right credit cards that get the right perks, getting upgraded to first class and having all of your wants attended to is the life this little one knows. We’ll work on grounding her more in the future.

Now, for as much as the whole hip replacement thing was less than ideal, I have to admit…there were some perks that made it not the absolute worst during this travel time. Per advice from the doctor, Adam filed for mobility assistance with the airline. Because of that, as soon as we got off the plane in MSP, there was a cart waiting for us and it drove us to our next gate…which would have been a LONG way to walk for a dude with a fresh hip. (Jill and Kay, if you’re reading this it was basically the exact same route we RAN that one time…I’m still scarred from that).

Since we had a few hours to kill, we went ahead and ended up enjoying some time in the Delta lounge. (See? Bougie kid traveler) We could definitely tell it was a big travel day because that place was as packed as Adam and I had ever seen it. As always, there was great food…and our kid ate just grapes, pepperonis, and pickles. It all ended well though as it gave Adam and I both some time to get a couple loose ends tied up and Miriam got to kick off her screen time binge!

Thing to know about Miriam: she LOVES getting to talk with airline pilots and sitting in the cockpit of the plane. It’s generally the first thing she asks the flight attendant about as she walks on. Earlier this year, this habit also taught her that Delta pilots often carry trading cards of different airplanes, which means that every pilot she meets now she’s hitting up for cards (even if they’re not Delta pilots…which gets awkward). Our flight attendants and pilots on this flight were absolutely charmed by Miriam, so not only did she get to wear the pilot’s hat for a photo in the MASSIVE cockpit of an A350, but she was also given her 2nd Team USA trading card, which we’ve learned is a special edition and kind of rare card.

A few weeks ago we noticed in the Delta app that we had the opportunity to upgrade our seats for the long haul flight for a not-too-large amount of dollars. We jumped on that opportunity and had ZERO REGRETS about that. Our premium select seats were ah-mazing, and honestly a thing I never imagined getting to experience because the full price of those seats is FAR out of our budget. They weren’t lay flat seats, but they were definitely lay-back-just-enough, which made for a remarkably enjoyable 13 hour flight from Minneapolis to Incheon/Seoul, South Korea. Adam and I are aisle seat people (which honestly throws gate attendants off because it’s apparently weird when a couple doesn’t want to sit right next to each other), which meant that Adam and Miri got to enjoy some quality time for the duration of our flight with an occasional switch out with me.

A 13 hour flight is no small task for a little kid. For the most part, Miriam weathered it amazingly with just a couple moments of hangry where she yelled, “You said there’d be spaghetti, Dad, so where’s my spaghetti!?!?” to the point where even I was frightened from across the aisle. Other than those moments, she enjoyed her undisturbed movie time with randomly loud giggles and exclamations as she ate and got to drink all the juice she wanted. After her 3rd movie, we did end up cutting her off and made her listen to her Tonie Box so she could get some sleep (with the help of melatonin). Honestly, the Tonie Box is the real MVP of this trip so far.

A thing to know about South Korea: they’re into cute. Everywhere you turn there’s cute characters in branding for all the things, there’s cute jingles to go with all the things, and overall it’s part of what makes Incheon/Seoul airport so wonderful. Other bonuses ICN has: lots of kid play areas, luggage carts everywhere so you don’t have to actually carry your carry-on items, and great lounges. We had a handful of hours in ICN and we did what we could to live it up despite all of us being pretty tired because of the 15 hour time difference. Things DID get a touch dicey toward the end of our time there because the alarm from my cat-nap didn’t go off, so we ended up having to move more quickly than planned from the lounge to the gate.

When it comes to the kid zones though, it was a fascinating thing to watch Miriam have her first experience navigating play with kids who don’t speak the same language as her. She admittedly came in with some BIG AMERICAN ENERGY which we had to offer coaching on, but eventually play was successfully initiated. In South Korea they take teaching English to their kiddos REALLY seriously (per Adam’s brother who teaches English in S. Korea), and the couple English lines that a few kids knew ended up being just enough to break the ice. After awhile you wouldn’t have even known there was a language barrier.

Once we finally made it to our gate for our flight to Bangkok, it was clear the travel was wearing on us all. This is the part where we all admittedly got a little grumps. Our last flight was one operated by Delta’s partner, Korean Air. We flew with them last time and had a wonderful experience, so we were looking forward to this 6-hour ride with them. It didn’t disappoint. They offered great meal options (I LOVED my Korean style octopus dish), and they offer great things for kids to help make their flight easier. On this flight I also unlocked a new level of relaxation with a combination of an eye mask, noise-canceling headphones, and a relaxing playlist from Yiruma. With that combo I completely slept through pre-flight prep and take-off, then woke up in the air thinking we were still on the ground and taxiing to the runway.

We finally landed at BKK at 12:35am on December 25th. Miriam was sure to point out how warm it was and that we really were saying hello to summer. The new hip came in handy once again, as Adam got us escorted to the special needs immigration line, which had a 5 minute wait opposed to the hour-long wait for the standard line. Luggage was available incredibly quickly, then we just took a taxi to our hotel.

We’re staying at the same hotel we stayed at in Bangkok last year: Centre Pointe Sukhumvit 10. With this being Miri’s first big international trip, we wanted something familiar. We’ll share more about the hotel in future posts, because this one is already way too long.

Miriam insisted on having snack before she would lay down, so I went to the vending machine to get some chips and peanuts—her favorite were the smoked salmon pizza flavored ones. The last time I looked at the clock before falling asleep it was 3:05am. We all conked pretty hard after that. This Christmas Eve was definitely one for the books!