We've Arrived in Australia!

We flew out of Omaha to Dallas at 4:10pm on Monday, December 29, 2014, then Dallas to Sydney flight left at 8:10pm that evening. Our overseas flight was scheduled for 17 hours!! We flew Quantas and had such a good flight given the length of time. In order to make it over the ocean without refueling in the A380 they have to fly with 100 seats open. This meant lots of empty seats to get the kids able to rest more comfortably during the flight. All three kids were able to sleep quite a few hours. Lydia was a little cranky by the end of the flight but we can't complain how the whole travel experience went overall! Arrived in Sydney and we knew we didn't have enough time to get through customs, baggage and catch our next flight. No problem though because we knew there were daily flights to Melbourne, so we didn't stress. We cleared customs and immigration, etc with ease and only then realized we forgot to grab one of our 50 lb. bags off the carousel (19 bags/stroller and 3 kids is a bit much to keep track of when sleep deprived). Spoke with baggage claim and realized it would be fairly easy to get it delivered to our hotel (we did get our bag delivered today, by the way). Took our final flight to Melbourne and arrived around 10am on December 31, 2014. Got our rental car and literally had just enough room for 18 bags/stroller and 3 kids and Barry and I). Divine intervention that I left a bag behind? I think so! We had a half hour drive to our hotel. We are staying at a Comfort Inn and have a 2-story apartment with 2 bedrooms and full kitchen. It's been nice so far to have the space.

We are a bit off schedule with time zones. For example, Lydia slept from 1pm to 1am yesterday/today (wrong 12 hours kiddo). By 3am today, we were all up, so we decided to drive to Barwon Heads to watch the sunrise. It's only about 30 minutes from Geelong. Well worth it!

Barwon Heads, sunrise on January 1, 2015

We walked the beach, enjoyed the quiet of the morning and the cool temps. Lydia was fascinated with the ocean. We ALL were really! There were tide pools right below the boardwalk, but unfortunately we didn't see any signs of life. Lots of seaweed on this beach.

Lydia enjoying watching the waves crash onto the shore, January 1, 2015

 After we went to the beach we drove through Ocean Grove, which is a beach community about 20-30 minutes from Geelong. We think this is where we may rent a place for the next 6 months, but not sure yet. Very quiet city today as it's a holiday, but great shops and people. We stopped in a bakery and met a couple nice gentlemen who helped us pick out some pastries (they were AMAZING-I'll do food pics in the future). We also stopped in a coffee shop and I had a great latte and Barry got a good black coffee. Maybe they were good because we hadn't had a good coffee in 2 days?!

We spent a bit of time in Geelong driving through the city and becoming familiar with a few things, then headed to a grocery store for lunch items. Then off to our apartment for lunch and naps. We played a new card game, Skip-Bo, that Kiernan got from Grandma Mary (thanks!).

Our apartment at the hotel doesn't have a dishwasher, so we are enjoying teaching Hannah and Kiernan how to hand wash dishes. Is it bad they don't know how to do that yet? They think it's fun-hilarious!

We are all healthy and happy and excited about our journey so far. We are so blessed to experience this trip!

Hannah: So far, my favorite thing has been seeing the waves wash up on the beach.
Kiernan: We've seen some really cool birds. We know some are seagulls, but we need to get a book that tells us what the others are! More later.
Barry: Kilometers driven: 300; Accidents while driving: 0 (only one incident of almost driving on wrong side of road)

Happy New Year to all our friends and family! 2015 has been good to us so far, and we hope you have a fabulous 2015 too!

Sarah