On the Move: R&R in CA & the Plane

After weeks and months of planning the move, executing the, a lot of wonderful travel, too many emotional farewells, etc, etc we were on our way.

We had five fantastic days as a family relaxing at the Beach House - it was exactly what we needed. We didn't need to count any linens, we didn't need to sell anything, all we needed to do was relax and spend time together, which is what we did.

Walks on the beach, building sand castles, BBQs on the sea wall, feeding Jonathan the Seagull and just hanging out. Two nights before we were flying out to Australia poor Sydney woke up with Croup, so there was a visit to Urgent Care amongst all the fun in the sun. Rich and I also managed to do a spot of shopping just to make sure we had our full 12 pieces of check baggage completely filled (I kid not).

We made S'mores one night with the kids - a first for John. They liked helping us toast the marshmallows, but didn't want to eat them. This is John taking his first bite of S'mores, you can see that I'm more excited about this than he is. He had one bite (didn't take much convincing since there was chocolate involved) but he decided he'd rather just eat the chocolate and I could have the graham cracker and marshmallow.

The kids were just awesome on the plane - how could you not be when you're this small and have a Business Class flat bed to yourself! We left LA in the late evening, which was perfect timing. Sydney was asleep on take-off, and John fell asleep within 30 minutes. Rich and I both enjoyed a movie and dinner - can't say I know what he did after that, but I went to bed pretty quickly since I knew we had no idea what the night would hold!

And sure enough, I woke up after about 6 hours and the kids were sitting together in Sydney's seat watching Tom & Jerry (which Sydney got addicted to), drawing with the Flight Attendant and eating Snickers. They were really fantastic on the journey and had a lot of fun. Of course they fell asleep, deeply, deeply asleep about 45 minutes before we landed in Perth. Trying to wrangle all our luggage with Sydney & John passed out on our shoulders, go through Customs and get all our bags X-rayed was not so fun. But they woke up pretty quickly when they saw Grandma and Pa.

Welcome Home to Australia!