(written on Tuesday, Dec. 14th; it’s now Wednesday morning)

G’day! We made it.

We left Tulsa at 6:09pm on Sunday, December 12th, and arrived in Melbourne at 11:35am on the 14th, so our schedules are all out of wack. Here's Felix smearing handprints on the windows at the Tulsa airport:



The kids have been absolute troopers throughout, and are pretty exceptional traveling companions. The trip over is gnarly enough to make most adults fall apart and get cranky, but there was nary a whine from either of the kids (we won’t talk about their parents). Crashed out babies in the L.A. airport. Yes, I'm wearing sweatpants in public. I intend to wear them on the flights home too.





And here the crew is during the layover in Sydney. I think that it was about 6:15 in the morning, but it seemed the perfect time for some pizza and iced tea. Moments after this, Felix announced that he had to go to the bathroom RIGHT THEN, and while they were away, the airline called for final boarding, so there was a bit of excitement while we ran through the airport.



The flights went as well as really long, boring flights can go, and we arrived today just 10 minutes later than scheduled. Getting through customs was a breeze. Because we’re us, we hadn’t actually planned what to do once we landed, but we quickly found a shuttle to our hotel, booked it, and were on our way. This is the part where I sort of wanted to find a corner to cry or go to sleep in, but I’m proud to say that I did neither.

On the shuttle over, we met some retirees who were up from New Zealand. They’ve just spent a week on the Gold Coast, and are now having a week in Melbourne. I tried to wrap my head around the idea of needing a vacation from New Zealand, but couldn’t manage. They complimented our children for being extremely well-behaved, so of course we liked them a lot.

Check in was a bit of a problem, because someone insists on having two different last names. Once we figured out that the reservation was under someone’s professionally known as name rather than his real, legal name, it was fine. The room is actually a little apartment, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms and a kitchen and living room. It’s perfect.

Kitchen:



Master bedroom:



Kids' bedroom:



Kids' bathroom:





We checked out the room, dug through our luggage to find bathing suits, and headed straight down to the pool. Swimming was a really good idea, and I’m not just saying that because it was mine. It helped us shake off the travel funk and woke us all up. Back to the room for showers and clean clothes, then out to explore Melbourne.

We’re staying right in downtown Melbourne, just blocks from Chinatown. Three out of four O’Reillys were super stoked to eat some sort of Asian food, but one of us was not playing along, even though it is a Tuesday*. We ended up at what the sign describes as an authentic British pub, where we all ate our weight in fish and chips.
Back into Chinatown to a cake shop that we had seen earlier for some tasty treats.





All was going well until we decided to go back to the room. We were tired, but not miserably so. We thought that it would be nice to have a bit of down time and unpack. Um.

Once in the room, and Sophie put herself to bed. I was like, “baby, you shouldn’t take a nap, because it will throw your schedule off if you do”, and she was all, “yeah, whatever mom. I’m not sleeping, I’m just sort of resting”. Then Felix wanted to watch bad Australian kids’ shows, so Stephen and I decided to read in our room. I read, and he said, “I’m going to take a 15 minute nap. Wake me up in a few, would you?”, which I did, but then he didn’t quite wake up, and apparently I fell asleep too, and the next thing any of us knew, it was four hours later.

Oops.

We found Felix crashed out on the sofa, Sophie was still in her bed, and all of us hated everything to do with being awake. By this point it was 9:00pm local time, and it felt really bizarre to be waking our kids up and dragging them out to walk around Melbourne, but if we had let them sleep straight through, we would have all woken up for the day at 2am.
Sophie held tough, but Felix was just not having it. He was so bummed about being awake and even more bummed about going for a walk, but again, they both held it together extremely well.

We walked and bought our first Freddo frogs from the 7-11, had a delicious late night snack of McDonald’s fries, and got back to the room around 11pm. Kids are now in bed for the night, and I’m about to join them.

* Earlier this year Felix (who is the pickiest eater that has ever been born in the history of the world) announced that he’s decided that it’s time for him to start trying new things. To this effect, he further decided that Tuesdays would be his day for doing so. Today while talking about eating in Chinatown, he was like, “but it’s not Tuesday!”. He was not happy to find out that yes, actually it is.

P.S. Everyone slept until 4:15am, when the kids decided it was time to get up and party. I laid down the law, and Felix went back to sleep until 6:15am. Sophie chose to stay up, listening to music quietly, so today is likely to suck for her.