Plane flights, East Coast, and I have packed these suitcases seven thousand times.

We are on the East Coast.  We have been for about a week and a half at this point.  Update on current situation:

1. Finn did fantastic on his first plane ride ever. He was very chill (the half a sedative he had was an A+ decision), and slept sprawled out on both mine and Will’s laps for 95% of the flight.  The only part of the flight he did not care for was when the plane actually landed and the plane shook a bit.  But all in all, a painless process.
2. Pee pad failure.  Major failure.  I took Finnegan into a bathroom at the airport and really tried to hype up the peeing process.  After pulling out a dog-pee-soaked pad and ceremoniously laying it on the bathroom floor, he just stared at me and then went and sat politely by the door, hoping to leave. We continue to struggle.
3. Speaking of Finn, here is a photo of him enthusiastically looking for fish in Will’s mom’s pond.  Please note the clownfish life vest:

He has been doing a lot of swimming and a lot of chasing fish around the pond, attempting to be interspecies best friends. Here is a very dramatic picture of him looking like an inspirational poster:

4.  After hauling 4 suitcases, 3 carry-ons, and a dog through the Boston airport (“Is that a cahka spaniel? Finnegan! What a nice Irish name!”), we have decided to reduce our suitcases.  Thus instead of being done with packing and obsessively weighing suitcases, we’re still rolling clothes and debating about bringing can openers. Currently we are 10-15 lbs over the weight limit (5+ lbs each on our two big suitcases), and getting increasingly tired of iterative packing. Once we are in Tel Aviv, I may blog about deciding what to bring, what to store in a closet in my parents’ house, and what to get rid of/sell.

5. I am spending the day calling and emailing every single Israeli consulate in the United States to ask about business days in Israel, since we need to fax Finn’s paperwork two business days before our flight. While this seems straightforward, the business week in Israel differs from in the US. So far I have gotten stuck in a recording loop in the Boston, New York, Miami, Atlanta, and Chicago consulates. We’ll see how many others I can rack up today.