I've been trying really hard not to think about the travel portion of our trip to Russia, to no avail. So I've decided instead to just get it all down on paper; expectations, worst-case scenarios, mitigation plans, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And then, after we've endured the journey, I'll report back how it went and someday (perhaps 10 years from now), I'll read this journal and laugh. But at this moment in time, I recognize that September 5th, 2018 (incidentally, Matt's birthday) could very well be the most exhausting 24 hours of my life.

Our journey actually begins the evening of August 31st, when we need to be out of our house. Hopefully we will have all of our belongings tucked into the garage, 3 large suitcases packed for Russia, and 1 or 2 small suitcases packed for our remaining days in the United States. I'd really like to "quarantine" our Russia bags as much as possible to avoid last minute mistakes, like forgetting diapers for Lev or Finn's precious two blankies. So, we will say a tearful good-bye to Duluth and head to Anoka for four days of homelessness and family time. Assuming history repeats itself, the night before we fly out will be pretty short on sleep for the excited/terrified adult members of the family. Our flight departs Minneapolis at 7AM, so a few short hours after we finally drift off, the last-minute frenzy of checking and double checking that we have all the necessary documents for our adventure will begin.

Our first flight is just under 3 hours and will hopefully be exciting and interesting enough that Finn will stay awake for it. After we land in New York we have about 3 1/2 hours to collect our bags, change terminals, check-in and re-check our bags, and attempt to wear out the kids without wearing out ourselves. I'm imagining something like a dog sled, where the two children wearing "harness backpacks" (the nice way of saying "leashes") pull the adults around the terminal on some wheeled device (stroller, suitcase, SmartCart, I haven't quite worked out the details yet).

At 1:30PM our time, we board an Aeroflot Boeing 777 for our 9-hour flight to Moscow. This conveniently coincides with normal nap time, so I'm hoping that shortly after takeoff exhaustion will set-in and we can all get some rest. I'd love to be able to extend nap time into something closer to a normal night, but that seems overly optimistic. I think I will try a small dose of melatonin at least for Finn, and hope it helps. The back-up plan is liberal use of the in-flight entertainment -- bring on the brain rot. I honestly haven't thought much about how Lev will travel; I'm just hoping that he will go with the flow like he usually does, but I'm sure there will be plenty of events where he escapes to run around the airplane. What's the worst that could happen? We can always put a leash on him.

We arrive in Moscow at 10:30PM our time and have just under 3 hours to again collect our bags, go through customs, and re-check our bags. At this point there is no doubt the adult members of the family will be exhausted. I’m unsure what condition the tiny humans will be in. Option A: They will have gotten 5-6 hours of sleep on the long flight and are ready to run around for a bit. Option B: They only napped for an hour or two and now it is their night. Will they be content sleeping in a stroller and baby carrier? Or will they be upset that they aren’t in proper beds and succumb to screaming? I think Matt will be tasked with managing our luggage, and I will be doing one of the following: chasing over-tired children, carrying sleeping children, trying to soothe screaming children, or any combination of the above. If tears of frustration haven’t already made an appearance, they will now. At 1:30AM our time, we board an Aeroflot Boeing 737 for the final 4-hour leg of our journey. It seems extremely likely that we will all sleep for the better part of this flight, although this seems like a good time to note that because we didn’t buy tickets for Lev he will be an infant-in-arms for the entire trip. We arrive in Novosibirsk at 5:30PM local time; with any luck that will allow just enough time to get settled into our new home and then crash for the night. Certainly the kids will be good and exhausted and won’t realize that it is actually morning their time. Please, please, let this be true.