We made it

We survived! It’s been a seriously crazy couple of days. We took off on James & Cavan’s birthday, the 10th. Spokane to Seattle where we spent the night & visited with James’ Aunt Penni, Uncle Kim, his cousin Arielle and sweet baby Colter. We left Seattle the next day @ 3pm arriving in LA @ 5. Our flight from Seattle was easy once we got started. Declan was asleep before we even took off. They had us all sitting apart so that was stressful, but we ended up together literally shuffling seats as we boarded.
We arrived in the domestic terminal @ LAX. We then had to take a shuttle to the International terminal. While we did that we met a friendly couple from Melbourne who shared all kinds of tips about the city with us. The wait for our long flight to Sydney was fun. We sat a gate away from the boarding gate so we could spread out & relax. A fun dance group who had come from Perth to the US to perform @ Disney Land sat close and the teen girls fell in love with Cav & Dec and played with them, making our wait seem shorter while simultaneously exhausting the kids! It was awesome. Our flight left LA at 10:30PM and was estimated to take 15 hours. The AirBus is the most amazing invention Ever! We had a middle section all to ourselves. Each seat had a touch screen with a personal entertainment system that blew my mind. There was an interactive map & travel section sowing our flight pattern and allowing us to search AU maps. There was a camera attached to the Tail of the plane so we could watch our take off & landing. That was the highlight of the boys’ trip I think. We had new release movies, classics, foreign films and Australian movies & documentaries. TV shows, books on tape, all kinds of music & radio channels and games. They even had a kids menu with kid movies & TV shows, and games as well. Every seat had a phone in the handle and the back of the phone was a controller for the games, as well as controlled your lights, air and other fun stuff. There was a power plug in & USB plug in for each seat as well as a “foot hammock” attached to the seat in front of you. The meals were amazing, we were served dinner at about 11:30PM(4:30PM AU) then we slept for about 8 hours. We woke up about 2AM AU (7AM US) which left only 4 ½ hours until we reached Sydney. The boys did amazing. When we weren’t eating or watching shows we went for aisle walks. There was a yummy snack & drink bar that was help yourself.
*insert- we are sitting in our hotel room while I type this up. The news is on, we’re learning name/location pronunciations. Sting is playing here in Melbourne and I commented on it. Cavan just yelled from the bathroom that “No mom, the stink’s not Melbourne, it’s me, I’m pooping.” Now he’s singing a dragon fight poop song ☺ The boys are making this trip sooo funny.

Qantas Airlines was amazing. Sydney customs, not so much. We arrived in Sydney @ 6AM AU. We had to get through Immigration, collect our baggage, go through Customs, recheck our bags, take a shuttle to the Domestic Terminal and be ready to board our last flight to Melbourne by 9:10AM. We thought that would be plenty of time. We went through everything without a hitch. It still took 3 hours!! Most of you know the day before leaving, we had some issues with a flight that was supposed to leave Sydney @ 7:45. I’m glad we were put onto a later flight. We would never have made it!
Finally arriving at our Hotel here in Melbourne was amazing. It had been approximately 44hours and 45 minutes since we left our Hotel in Seattle. From the air Melbourne looks like the northwest, surprisingly Spokane-like. The suburbs are spread out, farmland mixed with forests. We took a bus from Tullamarine Airport to Downtown CBD. Then we took a smaller shuttle to our hotel. Mom, you would be so proud of my bus & shuttle skills! For the rest of you I have until now refused to take the Pullman bus because I hadn’t before and IT’S SCARY if you’ve never done it! (Yes I am in my mid 20’s, really it’s my parent’s fault, right?!?) We’ve yet to take the wonderful mix of Trams, Shuttles, Busses and Trains. But we will be today so I’ll let you know how it goes.
Buying Internet from the hotel or any “internet café’s” is expensive here so we are in search of free wi-fi until we can get our service started. I’m getting this post ready & saved on the computer until we can jump online and post it. It might be a bit until we get constant service so be patient & you’ll here from us soon.
*Cara- During our entire trip so far we’ve experienced people with serious personal space issues. Just thought I’d let you know it’s everywhere and I now consider it to be a serious pet peeve! ;)