jet lag with 6

How do you manage jet lag with 4 small children? The first night we tried the "all natural" method which is lots of play and sunlight during the daytime and laying still in bed all night regardless if you are asleep or not. I am not a fan of just laying in bed and it is a little tricky when you get everyone asleep but one "little one" is wide awake ready to play. The iPod was a huge help. I would turn it on repeat play of one of their favorite stories and tell them that they could lay still and listen and get up when the story is completely over or the sun is up. The next night I asked them all to cough so I could justify giving them a dose of children's night-time cold medicine. That worked much better. Here they are sleeping at the "World Impact Center" in San Francisco. Our good friend Paul Chan is the Bay area director.
Here we are with our wonderful family at Chinese Grace. We are so blessed by this community. It is amazing how Asians never age or change. Everyone looks exactly the same as they did when I first met them back in 1997!
Ezra is meeting our good friend Kingston. We use to teach Kingston when he was 14 and now he is teaching teens!
We were able to take an afternoon and meet up with our good friends from China - Spencer, Hope and Amanda's cousins in the U.S. It was great to be with so many fun children!
Our Children are getting to see the Golden Gate Bridge.
From S.F. we drove to Reno, Salt Lake, Denver and then to Oklahoma City. It was a fun way to introduce our children to America. In Denver we met up with our good friends Steve and Karen Hughes. In Reno we met up with our friend Bob and his family (4 children all the same ages and sex as ours) and in Salt Lake we just stopped to look around.

This was our Children's first time ever to play in snow!!!!

After 24 hours of traveling non-stop with 4 small children Monty and I counted our children, luggage, and passports and smiled knowing we MADE IT! We arrived at the rental car desk astonished that everything had gone so smoothly. Then we gave the lady our driver license and she informed us that it was expired and could not pick up a rental. I smiled and asked, "will you take a Chinese or Thai license?" She laughed, gave us the address for the DMV and said we could not pick up the car until we showed her a valid license. Thankfully our friend Paul picked us up and hauled us around until we made it to the DMV. I did learn that they should have taken our oversees license but I guess the lady thought I was kidding:).

Some first observations of the U.S. from our children:

"Where are the bicycles?"

"I need to potty, don't worry I can just go here on the grass." "No!" said her parents

"What language do I use?"

"Can you REALLY drink the water?"

This was Feb of 09, sorry that it is Jan of 10 and I am just now posting!