My famous last words: “I can’t believe how smooth today has been; the kids have done just amazing”. Really Kristi? Who says this when there are still 3 more hours until we arrive at our final destination? Not even 5 minutes after these words came out of my mouth, that sentence became false.
We had just landed at the Frankfurt airport after the 8 hour flight from Chicago to Frankfurt. Cashton fell asleep on the tarmac in Chicago and didn’t wake up until 30 minutes before we landed and Karis slept about half the flight because she couldn’t get enough of the movies offered on the flight. We had 1 hour before our flight left for Hamburg – our final flight. We were walking on the automatic walkways on the way to our gate and our little pigeon-toed Cashton crash landed on the walkway breaking open his chin. At first look, Ben was quite confident it wasn’t going to stop and might even need stitches.
We had already gone through customs and were almost to our gate. With 3 carry-ons, 4 backpacks and 2 kids, we decided that we’d just go to the gate and drop everything and Cashton and I would leave to find much needed medical attention. By this time, we really couldn’t stop the bleeding.
Fortunately for me, our situation required minimal words and I was humbled by how helpful and caring those were that escorted us even giving Cashton candies while we waited. Paramedic men arrived (with a stretcher) in a little room they had us wait in. I was able to negotiate that we could walk – we were already making a nice little scene. The paramedic took us to the medical facility that was outside of customs clearance and less than 30 minutes later they were able to use the butterfly tape strips to close his chin up and believed we could get by without stitches (thank you Lord!). Even better, we had 20 minutes until the plane would depart so we could make it back on time, except…..
Kristi had her boarding passes and money for the medical attention but failed to put the passports in her pocket when she went searching for help. Customs could not let us through without calling the German police. It is a very odd feeling to stand there with a 2 year old in your arms and no real documentation and listen to a German conversation between a customs agent and police discussing whether I was trustworthy enough to defy the entire security clearance process by walking through. I must look very non-threatening.
We missed our connection but got on another one an hour later and Cashton’s chin is healing so all is well.
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