Flying blind

The kids and I left Seattle Saturday night for San Fransisco we had a short layover there, where the kids got in their pajamas ready for the long flight to Hong Kong. That layover was probably the trickiest part because Lindsey was tired so I had all 3 bags strapped to the stroller and just kept telling her a little further. Once we got our new boarding passes and to the gate it was down hill. At least until they "helpfully" took my stroller and put me in line for early boarding with the other famlies. That last 100 feet to the plane door were very long.
Lindsey was out before the plane took off. They both slept over half way to Hong Kong and were happy to read books and watch movies the rest of the way. The only problem during this flight was I took out my contacts to sleep. When I woke up I went to put on my glasses but a screw was lose and the left lens popped out. I found the lens but no screw. Then I tried putting my contacts back in and lost my right contact. So I was flying half blind.
Lindsey did her best to pull her little rolling "Malaysia bag" when she could. A sweet little grandma in line getting off the plane in Hong Kong said she used to travel that way. She called a young man working at the airport over and said "she has two kids by herself take her to the front on the line" which he did (every airline was good at doing this for us).
When we arrived in Hong Kong 14 hours later we had a 9 hour layover. It was a nice airport though, and time went by pretty quickly. We found a kid TV lounge showing cartoons down one hall, and a small play place down another. We had to walk every so often because I kept almost falling a sleep. Finally Andy started to get sleepy and we went to a resting lounge and laid down for a bit before going to our gate.
The last flight to Malaysia was 4 hours. We all slept the last half. And the kids were out after that. Which turned out to be a good thing. It meant I obviously needed some help. The crew thought they were so cute, and when I explained how much traveling we had done they offered to help. But they all had bags of their own, so they asked if I could wait a minute and they would help me to customs. One scooped up Lindsey and put her in the stroller, 2 others each took a bag and I had sleeping Andy. They took one look at me in customs and filled out my paperwork for me, didn't have a pen on the plane, stamped us without question (which was nice because we didn't have visas in hand, and all other check-ins had said it would be up them). Then there was Tony waiting at baggage claim. He had told a security guard his wife was flying in with two small children and lots of big bags. The guard pointed him to a booth to get a pass, which he was denied, and when he went back to the guard he said, we'll work it out. He ended up letting Tony in when he saw us. Which was a great relief to me, though I imagine the people I had working with me would have continued doing so.
Tony drove us to our new home, and we all went to bed. The kids never did wake up.

-Lisa