Count Down to Tokyo!

Gemma left a large magnet sitting on my laptop for several hours and it completely erased my hard drive!!! Consequently, I haven't had much access to a computer (I'm typing now on the kids' "slower than molasses" PC- I see now why they are begging for a new computer!).

I've been wanting to get on here and announce that we are going to spend Christmas in Tokyo, Japan this year!! Most of you know Scott's brother John and his wife Karen have been teaching at the American School in Japan for the last 30 years! They have a home here in Seward they enjoy for about 10 weeks in the summer and 2-3 weeks at Christmas time but otherwise they LIVE in Japan. Scott's been over a couple times and lived there for 6 months as a student teacher.

We've often talked about visiting John and Karen but could never decide on the best time of year to do it. Well, THIS is the time!! We are leaving on December 17th and will spend Christmas and New Years (and our 11th anniversary) with them and return on January 2nd! The big bonus is that Ben and Shawn (our nephews) are going along as well. Shawn is a student at Concordia here in Seward and Ben attends Wichita State in KS. This will be traveling "home" for Christmas break for them.

By the time we pulled the trigger and purchased the plane tickets, the one-stop flights were sold out, so we first fly an hour and a half to Minneapolis, then 3 hours to Portland and then 12 hours to Tokyo!! Between flights and layovers the trip will take approximately 19 hours. Then with the 15 hour(ahead) time difference, we will actually be arriving into Tokyo at 4pm the next day!

Our children are well traveled but they've certainly never taken this long of a trip. Heck I've never flown this far! So we'll load up the I-Pod and the I-Touch with movies and bring playing cards and checkers and storybooks and whatever else we can think of to entertain ourselves....and then just PRAY! The good thing about traveling with 6 people is that we'll pretty much take up an entire row on the airplane, so at least I won't have to worry about my 10 month old crawling across some stranger's lap!

We've decided to ask Santa to come to our house in Nebraska and just make a quick stop in Japan with a present or two since we won't have room to pack all those presents and bring them home on the airplane!! And that will have to do because with the value of the dollar weakened against the Yen, there will be no last minute Christmas shopping in Tokyo!

And by the way, because of this trip you will NOT be recieving a Christmas card from the Seevers this year. I'm hoping to send out "Happy New Year" cards at the end of January!