Our Christmas decorations for the year. Normally I’m into way over the top, glittery, obnoxious, gaudy Christmas decorations, but it’s way too depressing to come home from an Australian trip and have to pack up Christmas stuff while getting over jetlag and going back to work and school. Plus, these little trees from the 70s are awesome. I just learned that there was a white version available, and now it’s my goal in life to find one.
The luggage. The small red guy got nixed at the last second for a bigger gray one that will hold more Australian candy and cookies on the way home.
We have a REALLY BIG CAR, and we it was still a tight squeeze. Goal for next time: travel light enough to fit everything in the back of my Golf.
We made it to Houston! See the Elf on the Shelf hanging out of Felix’s backpack? Grammy got that for him, and his name is Matt Mittens O’Reilly. Fee is super into Matt Mittens right now, so you’ll likely see him a whole lot.
Killin’ time.
While on the flight from Houston to L.A., Felix asked the flight attendant, “may I please have a Sprite”. The flight attendant gave him a big thumbs up for his manners, and then came back and said that he’d like Felix to have a free snack box for being awesome. It was pretty great – cheese and crackers, applesauce, Skittles (saved for Sophie), Oreos, pepperoni sticks, Goldfish crackers, etc. Felix was thrilled, even though you can’t tell from this blurry photo.
Another highlight of this flight was getting to sit next to Patricia, a grandma from Taiwan. She wanted to know (repeatedly) if Felix was warm enough. Was he hungry? Was he happy? How about now? Is he cold? She was SO RELIEVED when Felix got his snack box (he really wasn’t hungry, I promise, Grammy), and even happier when he put his sweatshirt back on. At the end of the flight, she took a photo of Fee and emailed it to Poppa. She was a total delight, and I’m really glad that we got to meet her. (Sadly, she was flying to L.A. to be with her critically ill sister, so I’m thinking of them and hoping for the best.)
By the time that we got to Los Angeles, we were all pretty done. Getting over to the international terminal had a bit of the Hunger Games feel to it; totally survival of the fittest in terms of getting on the shuttle over there. I’m not kidding when I say that it was the most frustrating/exhausting part of the trip. Once at the international terminal, we tried to pretend it had never happened, and got in a 45 minute line to go back through security. It was hugely chaotic, but thankfully we were numb enough by then to just sort of move along like sheep. We got to an extremely harried TSA worker who looked on the verge of tears, and Sophie gave her a big hug. She looked totally shocked (Sophie will hug anyone, anytime, and we’re just sort of used to it at this point), but declared it the biggest blessing of her day, and we became Security Line Royalty at that point. We got personally seen through a special detector, and received the stink eye from approximately 1,479 people still waiting in line. Hey, all they needed to do was encourage their children to hug complete strangers, and they too could have been on their way.
Totally done.
But then! The Gorders showed up. They are some of our very best friends, even though Bryan Gorder drives me totally nutty most of the time. Bryan plays bass in Slorder with Stephen, Leah, who is totally lovely, and Robyn, who is also known as Goblyn (her nickname for Felix is Foofee, which is perhaps the worst nickname known to man).
On ridiculously long flights, they helpfully give you a map that indicates how far you’ve gone, and how long you have left to go. It can be either really depressing or really thrilling, depending on how much of the flight you’ve managed to sleep through.
This Qantas flight also offered Skycam, which is a camera affixed to the tail of the plane. So you can watch yourself just sort of cruise around. We’re right above the wing on the left.
We made it! We landed, got through passport verification, got our bags, breezed through customs, and got a taxi in record time.
First things first, our hotel has computers in the lobby, and the kids must check them out.
This is where things get a bit blurry. It’s several days later, and I actually have very little memory of that first day, other than the fact that our rooms were not ready. Meaning that we had to somehow drag ourselves out and find something to do. The very kind, young, and attempting to be helpful bag check guy suggested that we go down to a certain lane, as it was filled with “family-friendly restaurants”. (Next note to self: STOP TRUSTING young people who have clearly never parented a day in their lives when they recommend family-friendly places. I’m sure that they mean well.) What we found was a super crowded lane full of really trendy restaurants where a plate of pasta cost $21. By this point the kids that we had just dragged around the world were getting a bit rough around the edges and were not going to handle a 45 minute wait for a table (though seriously, were still total superstars), so we backtracked and found a McDonald’s. Once fed, they perked up considerably.
I think that at this point, we checked into the hotel and went for a swim, but my memory gets really hazy here. The goal was to keep the kids awake until 8:30pm Melbourne time, which felt a bit like we were torturing them.
We went back out to find a big park that was relatively nearby, except that I was navigating, so it was actually about a three mile walk by the time that we got there. Oops.
There are all kinds of cool statues in Melbourne, but this one was a special favorite.
And they have a wee Christmas village right in the middle of downtown.
Hey, look what we found. I should really be thanked for this, as if I hadn’t gotten us completely lost, we would never have seen it.
We finally found the park, and it was great. They have a little Tudor village plunked in the middle of it. I’m a total sucker for anything miniature.
And a fairy tree.
And on to the playground.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral was on the walk to Chinatown. It’s gorgeous.
This is a shortcut through to Chinatown. Melbourne is just beautiful.
Parrots!
We went to a Chinese restaurant, and were put in a room on the second floor, completely alone. It was awesome, because then we could wrangle our exhausted children out of the public eye. It wasn’t the very best food ever, but it was still a great, relaxing meal.
And then it was bedtime. I declared us the World Champions of All-Time for getting through the first day without needing a four-hour nap. The kids were out like a light, but Stephen and I were up every 30 minutes to check on Sophie. She’s unfortunately really struggling with asthma right now, and that night it was the worst that we’ve seen it in many, many years.
(If you read lower than this point, you’ll be heading into 2010 territory, which you're welcome to do, but you may wonder why our kids magically look two years younger.)
Yay! You're there! (Getting there sounds hellacious.) I hope you're having tons of fun and that Sophie's asthma knocks it off immediately.
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