Farewell, Woolworks!

My dear friends on the other side of Atlantic! I am back home and starting to settle down a little. There are many things to clean and arrange, so its been few days I have not done anything but organizing to feel good. Mess makes me nervous. Anyway, now it is a good time to let you know how my travels went. Smoothly, very smoothly, indeed.
We started nice and early on Friday morning, as all the bags and suitcases were packed well ahead af time by somebody very diligent, ahahahaa! Josh's father prepared us a nice breakfast, although we were little too anxious to eat too much.
Grand Mercury, also known as Creamsicle, was jam packed. Both front and back row had a bag in the center of the sofa seats to allocate the weight more evenly. The big boat was really going heavy. But hey ... we got there. We took Merrit parkway and Tappanzee bridge and Graden State Parkway and arrived to Newark International Airport nice and early.
Our six suitcases and 4 really heavy carryon items would have required few carts, but Josh had to park the car too. So we ended up hiring a local helper who carted all our belongings directly to the check-in gate. As there were nobody there yet we chatted with the workers "to clear the air" for the upcoming luggage overweigth. I had no money, but they asked me to start loading the bags on the scale anyway. After parking the car, Josh would pay them. Well, nobody paid much attention to the reading on the scale, as some of the suitcases were rather hefty. I guess all that sweet talk in the beginning paid off - we were charged only $150 insead of 180 EUR. Thank you, Scandinavian Airlines!
Next thing we hear is a firealarm. Bot nobody was going anywere, so we also just kept going and finally it just stopped. The line were Josh could not come any further came quite quickly, so we had to say our good byes. He was worried about my crazy heavy carry-on suitcase, but I had good feeling about it and some back-up plans, so we just continued with three of us into the fun custom's "play area". Luckily I had not heard about those indecent searching procedures, and probably because of that innocence, nothing really happened. Nobody touched us, just the bags, nothing was taken away, just searched and re-searched.
There was still 30 minutes left before boarding when we got to the gate. Kids could look at the planes and we had little snack. Then the boarding people called for passangers how needed help, who were travelling with babies and ect. I looked at Zoe and decided that she would qualify as a small child and we took our stuff and headed to the plane. We were welcomed to board first and we had all the time to settle in, put the luggage into the overhead compartments, and take a seat. Then I felt so relieved and happy that we made it that I hugged and kissed the kids, told them how wonderful they have been and that it is already so easy to travel with them. It was just so smooth!
Plane arrived to Stockhom 45 minutes ahead of the schedule. There were movies and games on everyones seat, so kids were fully entertained. We were served dinner and a promise of a chocolate after the meal made sure that it was also eaten. Around 8PM Zoe crawled up on the floor and fell asleep. Janek stayed on the seat and snoozed there. Around midnight, when I felt for the first time that I could take a little nap, lights were turned on again and breakfast was served. Well ... were did all that long flight time go I don't know, but we were there and it was time to get up. Janek was fully awake and ready to rock, Zoe was slightly disturbed by the wake up.
We were last to leave the plane ( I just let Zoe to sleep as long as I could), so there was nobody in the terminal. When we went through the Swedish security, I was first time patted over my body. They even confiscated my toothpaste, which made me question. I tryed to explain them that I came from America, not going there, but they did not care and were very eager to search everything.
It was time to climb up into a tiny little Estonian Air propeller aircraft for our last leg of the journey. The plane was so small that they even took care of my carry-on suitcase. And the flight began ..... no turbulance, sunshine, snacks on board and extremely friendly steward Valeri. When we saw land again through the windows, kids cried out loud: "I see Estonia, Estonian is here!" and we all felt good and warm to be back on familiar homeland.