After posting about our trip each day, I realized that there were a few little incidents that I forgot to write about. Our first little mishap happened on the day we were to leave. It happened even before we got on the plane. I had packed all of our bags and they were all together in my bedroom. We had to be at the airport early in the morning (6:45am) for our first flight to Newark. With a 45 minute ride to the airport that meant we all had to be in the car NLT than 6:00am. I was up early, got a shower, dressed and got ready for the long trip. I then woke M up to get her ready. In the meantime, DH was up too and trying to get himself ready to drive us to the airport. I wanted to wait until the last possible moment to wake E up so about 5:45 I woke E up and DH was suppose to be taking all of our bags to the car at that time too. I didn't pay any attention to see if they all made it to the car because I was trying to get E awake and saying goodbye to her. Thinking all was well, we all got into the car and headed to the airport. DH pulled up to the departure gates, M and I got out of the car, and DH was putting our luggage on the curb. I looked at the luggage and said "Where's my red suitcase?". DH said "What red suitcase?". It was at that moment that we realized that my red suitcase (the one with most of our clothes and extra shoes) was still sitting in my bedroom at home. DH immediately hopped back into the car and took off. So much for a nice goodbye! He was driving at a high rate of speed so he could get back in time for us to make our flight to Newark. He was making great time, when a few minutes ahead of him a truck had crashed on the interstate, thus blocking the whole North bound lane. DH doesn't like to show his credentials but had to at that point in order for the State trooper to let him pass and so he could get home. If that State Trooper wasn't as kind as he was, M and I would have had to make the trip to China with very little clothing and a few other necessities. In the meantime as the minutes ticked away, I'm starting to get a little nervous that we would be without a valuable piece of luggage. I could purchase stuff for M but not me. I don't think there are too many 5'9" larger women in China. With 30 minutes until our flight was scheduled to leave, DH pulls up, gives us our red suitcase, and then hugs M very quickly because he didn't get a chance to do that earlier. M and I checked the bag in and went through security as fast as we could, and headed to the gate (this time we were lucky and the gate was actually at the beginning of the terminal and not the end as it is usually in my travels). We were about the last people on the plane but we made it!! Our bag made it to China too!! Moral of the story: Double check to make sure all of your luggage is in the car before you leave the house!

Our second little incident happened at the Newark Airport. This incident wasn't as stressful though. M and I were the lucky ones to get the random search boarding passes. That meant that we were going to have our check in bags searched and have both of us patted down when we went through security. All went well until they were checking my backpack (the one that had the DVD player, camera and all of my items to keep me occupied on the flight) for explosives. The machine beeped and printed up a red ticket for traces of TNT. Holy Cow! How could that happen. Here I am probably one of the most law abiding individuals (I don't even like to drive over the speed limit because I don't want to get pulled over) and my bag has traces of TNT. They had to get another TSA person over to thoroughly search my bag again. The bag and contents had to be sent back through the xray machines. Both M and I were sitting on the chairs very nicely to not cause any other problems. Finally the TSA agent said we could go. Now 2 weeks later, I finally figured out why my bag tested for explosives (I wish I would have remembered the reason while they were searching through everything). On Chinese New Year Eve, the family that we were celebrating with gave M a little firework (a sparkler type firework). We didn't set it off at the house because M was getting tired and we were going to go back to the Hotel. I put the firework in my backpack to take it back to the hotel. We still didn't get a chance to set if off while in China so I had to throw it away because I knew we couldn't bring it back to the US. This firework left enough traces of explosives in my bag to set off the explosive detection machines. Moral of this story: Never put a firework in any bags that you plan to carry onto a plane!