We flew to Melbourne!

It happened! Our flight took off! We let the girls sleep until 10pm, then woke them up and jumped in a taxi to the airport. We got there to find no lines thankfully. All of our luggage got checked in (including the letter G worked so hard to get me - oops - making me very nervous about passport control) and we headed to the gate. The flight was supposed to leave at 12:45 am, but at 12:45, we were all still sitting at the gate. We learned, through talking to the crew members, that the flight the day before had taken off on time from Melbourne to Honolulu. But that 3 hours into the flight, they had an issue and had to turn around. So that accounts for the 17 hours: 3 + 3 + the 11 hour flight time. While it was annoying to be delayed 17 hours, we certainly had things a lot better than the poor people who had to do 6 hours of flying time, only to end up back in Melbourne, delayed.

We finally took off around 1:30 am on January 7. The girls stayed awake a couple of hours, ate some food and watched some tv. S was sitting next to me and told me "I'm ready to sleep." She fell asleep quickly and easily. Ii was sitting with Grandma and tried to sleep but got restless and then bossy. So I switched seats with Grandma so she could sit with a sleeping S and I could get Ii to sleep. She fell asleep quickly at that point. C was headstrong about not being ready to sleep so she kept watching tv. About 5 minutes after Ii fell asleep, I noticed C, slumped over against Opa, asleep. So I then went over and got C to sleep. Then the three adults settled in for some sleep, though not as good as the sleep the stretched out kiddos managed to get!

C and Ii got about 3 hours sleep, and S slept about 5 hours. They all woke up in time to watch a little more tv (HA! so much tv!) and then eat a croissant breakfast. We got to see a phenomenal sunrise. We landed at 8:45 am, went through passport control in a jiffy, collected all our luggage and then exited customs. We found my Auntie Helen waiting excitedly for us. I loaded the kids' carseats into her car and the luggage, then Grandma and Opa took a bus to Auntie Helen's house while the girls and I rode in her car. Somehow, only C fell asleep in the car and snoozed a good 90 minutes. The other 2 kids powered through. They were SO exited to get to Helen's house and run around.

S decided to write Ruby some Australia love mail, so that was created. And then the girls' 2mm wetsuits we ordered from an Australian company arrived. They're ready for all the swimming / snorkeling we will be doing over the next 3 months! Fast forward to dinner and a nice, early bedtime. Girls were out cold by 6:30 pm and slept straight until 5 am. Hopefully this bodes well for an easy time getting over jet lag.

For fun, I have included one of the first photos taken 5 years ago when we arrived in Australia with the 6 week old twins. We came to visit my Grandma, who was dying. She died 10 days after she met S and C.