It's Picture Time!

Finally, I'm getting this done. The "jet-lag" thing is no joke! We are all having a pretty hard time getting back on USA clock. The boys went to school yesterday, and Abbi went today (at least until noon, when they sent the kids home because of septic flooding problems). Alli starts on Wednesday. Yesterday Alli & I were grouchy and just plain old "ticked off" about our screwed up sleep schedule or lack there of, and I was telling Dave about it last night and of course he did the only wise and sensible Man-thing that he knew and went into a big lecture about how we need to just "suck it up", and go to bed regardless of if we're tired or not and make ourselves sleep, blah, blah, blah. You know, the answers to all our problems! Well today I'm smiling BIG! Dave's a little grouchy this evening and complaining about how he was wide awake this morning at 2:30am! NO WAY ... I'm so sorry!!! And he continued to tell me how he tossed and turned, channel-surfed, thought about going and pumping off the pool cover, ect... He had the nerve to continue his ranting and raving as I'm sitting there with a smirk on my face! I, of course, did what any loving and kind wife would do ... I told him he has to "suck it up" and just make himself sleep, then I added that I hope he has 1 or 2 more nights just like last night! :)

This post has pictures from the first part of our trip in Sydney and Melbourne. I will make other posts for the rest of the trip .... maybe not tonight, because I just need to go to bed and make myself sleep!

Santa found us even though we were far from home! Kevin tried the caviar tonight, and we also had some very exquisite pink salt in dishes on the table that is from a river in Australia. woohoo!

Here's the whole traveling gang at our Christmas Dinner! You might notice that everyone has a paper crown except for me, I didn't need mine because everyone knows that I'm the queen.

This is the "yacht" (kids term) that we cruised around the Sydney Harbor on, and had a very nice lunch. Austin, Mitch, Kevin, and Abbi also swam off the yacht to a beach and climbed around some rocks and caves.
Hey Alli, where's your steering wheel?????



Our Australian "family" in front of the almost finished Jayco plant in Melbourne.

Our Super Studs displaying the mini home that our dynamic group of 11 assembled while touring the plant! OK maybe not!

Here's the cousins adding some pizzazz to the Outback!

That does it for this post ... wait, is that snoring I hear coming from the overstuffed chair? Yup, he's "just sucking it up", at least until 2:00am!

Visa, what Visa??

E-tickets? .... check! Passports? .... check! Visas? .... what Visas?

I'm sure the ticket agent at O'Hare wasn't too impressed by the drop-jawed, stunned expression we were all giving her. The story is that not one of the 11 of us showed up with a visa, but of course it's not our fault. :) What we have found outis that it is "standard" procedure for Qantas to process visas for their travelers, it just didn't get done for our lucky group. The ticket agent at O'Hare (Paulette) was really so sweet and kind, and painstakingly did all the visa work on-line, and managed to get us on our way. We offered to bring her along to Australia, but I think she was afraid of traveling with our fine family. By the time that was all completed, we already knew that our flight out of Chicago was delayed and we wouldn't make our connection in LA, so Paulette again helped us out and booked us on a later flight out of LA, and Derald's agent did the same for them! When we made our way to the gate in LA, we discovered that each of our families were booked on different flights, which I'm sure wasn't Paulette's fault! But we were scheduled to be leaving about 15 minutes apart, so it all worked out and we met up in line at immigration in the Sydney Airport.

So here we are in Australia. As I'm sitting here writing this post, I am looking out the window of our motel room at this view ....




It is breathtaking ... especially if you're here. Sorry. We ate at a little outdoor cafe' on the far side of the water close to the Sydney Opera House. The breeze was a little chilly, but today it was a beautiful clear day. The "towel boy" at the pool told me that they had had 20 days of rainy weather, and today was the first clear sunny day. I wanted to tell him it was probably us bringing our wonderful Northern Indiana weather with us, but I'm sure he wouldn't have seen the humor in that, so instead I told him I'd love another Diet Coke!

And now we are all settling into our cozy beds for a good night of sleep.

It was a looong journey of 14 hours from LA to Sydney, 7,500 miles and major time changes. We left our house at 12:45pm on Friday, and when we landed in Sydney I looked at my watch and it was 6:30pm on Saturday, I hadn't changed my watch yet. When I got into the airport I changed my watch to Sydney time and turned the hands all the way forward to 10:30am Sunday! So are you confused yet? I am! Just figure 14 hours ahead of you, and you'll know exactly what we're doing. :) Try explaining to a 9 year old that we simply didn't have a Saturday evening. No movies, no ballgames, it just didn't exist in our lives. Right now it is 10:15pm Sunday night here which makes it 6:15am Sunday morning at home. Yes, we've been up for a very long time! Some of us slept on the plane and some of us napped fitfully. Mitch claims he slept for 10 hours, and I don't doubt it. I figure I got about 2-3 hours in. Yawn!


I need to crash into my King Size bed because morning will come quickly, but I'll leave you with one more picture of the cousins posing in front of the Sydney Opera House. Mitch must've been tired of walking! :)

From Down Under ... g'day!