Back to Reality!

Well, the holiday is done and the dust is starting to settle.  Our kids have returned to school and slotted back into routines.  I have taken a little longer!  I cannot seem to remember anything!  I have forgotten the password to our computer, my school login details, a Monday night meeting and our routine for sports training, piano lessons etc.  Thankfully I have Isabel to get me back on track!

Bruce and I have another week off and so far we have been pretty lazy.  Well, I should say I have been pretty lazy.  Bruce has been out getting some wood chopped with Dad and has been out to the farm a couple of times for a look around.  I'm sure he'll settle into the idea that he's on leave and stay here to do our jobs soon.

I have uploaded the photos and started on a photo book.  I've decided that it's cheaper and easier to do it digitally than scrapbooking, and we can get multiple copies for the kids as well.  We have over 3500 photos, so we may end up with Volumes 1 and 2! 

We have lots of photos I couldn't include earlier, taken on the other cameras so I'll share various ones here now.

One of the absolute highlights of the trip for me, was the time spent in Victoria with my host families.  We stayed for the four nights we were there, with Tim and Jane, my second host parents.  Back in 1986, I stayed with them for 5 months and their children, Matt and Heather were 5 and 3.  They are both married now and Matt and his wife Kirsty have a gorgeous baby Amelia.  We unfortunately didn't meet but I feel I know them just by staying there.  We did meet Heather's husband Jeff, which was lovely.  Tim and Jane are enormously and justifiably proud of their children and it was interesting for me to see the way they have achieved, given that I knew them when they were so small.

These photos were taken on our last night with Tim and Jane.The men cooked burgers on the BBQ out on the side deck.  It would have been after 7 p.m. in the bottom photo, and the others were taken well after we finished dinner, possibly close to 9 p.m.  We miss that quality of evening light where you seem to be able to achieve so much more every day- there are so many more hours (of daylight anyway.  I am well aware that there are still only 24 hours in the day in North America!).

Jane bought the kids water bottles with the maple leaf on the side.  This is Thomas's pride and joy.  He has been taking it to school and footy training.  Thank you Jane.

Jane's garden is beautiful.  Set on the edge of the water near Willows Beach, their home and garden is truly a haven, and an amazing place to recharge.  I have included one or two pictures of the garden previously but here are a few more...

I am having some difficulty uploading as many photos as I would like tonight so I will have to leave it there.  We loved watching the various wildlife from the garden although we didn't see as much as we would have like.  Jane fights a never ending battle with deer and sea otters in her garden.  We did see one sea otter and I thought I saw a whale.  It turned out to be a rock...  Don't the kids look like tourists????  We were enjoying that little patch of sunlight before heading out to Sidney to have dinner with my third host family, the Gurneys. 

Tomorrow we have our ballgames carnival and Thomas will also run the 200m.  We will go to watch and no doubt be time keeping... sometimes the last few weeks seems like a dream!

Home!

We are at home and I'm sitting int the lounge at the toowoomba unit drinking Moccona ridiculously early in the morning. I thought we were doing pretty well with the jet lag thing that was until about 3.20 this morning. Tonight I'll try to stay up later. On my phone so I will be slightly briefer but it is good to be home. The hurdle of actually getting home seemed insurmountable with a 14 hour stopover in china. But we did it. Incidentally our flight from china to Brisbane was delayed two hours so it was actually 18 hours between arriving in china and boarding our next flight. We spent that time in the same spot we sat on the way over- a patch of carpet near gate 107. From there we saw all sorts of interesting and disgusting things. A man who sat near us, having a conversation with someone, repeatedly spitting (clearing his throat and spitting it out!!!!) on the carpet at his feet. The young woman who brought her baby across to the bin, no pants on (the baby) and held it over the bin to go to the toilet. One meter from where we sat. The baby didn't oblige possibly because there we six strange looking westerners staring at it with horrified looks their faces!!! When the plane was delayed the first time we nearly cried, then a second... We were over it. Walking into Brisbane airport was quite emotional! We have had a great trip. All of us. We have learnt a lot about travelling (took too much!) but wouldn't change much. Had some amazing experiences and loved seeing people who were already precious to me but are now precious to our family. A great part of the trip has been the blog. Even though we didn't get comments (unless you are a member it's impossible to comment)we could see how many were reading every day and that helped us all to feel a connection with home. So thank you for being a support just by checking in on us. I haven't quite finished with the blog just yet. We need to sort through some photos and memories that I would like to include. But thanks for joining us. Felt like you were along for the ride! See you soon! Much love, all the Andersons x

The last leg.

We are packed and almost ready to go...  we are just finishing showers and having our last American fast food meal. Can't wait for that aspect of the trip to be over.  Can't wait to get back to the 12 wbt programme.

So yesterday, after our epic two days at Disneyland, we got a "cab" from Anaheim to Comfort Inn LAX.  We were expecting the cab at 7 am and we were cruising along, on track for 7 am when we got the call (at 6:35) to say our car was there for us.  Bruce was just out of the shower and we had stuff everywhere!  Bags were stuffed full, things thrown everywhere and we got out the door in about 5 minutes... we weren't really sure if we had everything, did have passports... the most important thing.

Our cab turned out to be a limo with a big black guy called German (pronounced Herman) driving.  He was really cool and we had a great trip across.

We decided on a tour of LA to pass the day before we could check in to the hotel at 3 p.m. We were picked up by another limo at 9 am and taken across to the HQ of VIP tours.  Our guide for the day was Eddie, a former LAPD cop who was passionate about his city and peppered every comment with "Come on guys!"   He referred to each group on the tour according to their place of origin- so we were Australia.  Some areas of the city were gorgeous, others gross.  Hollywood Boulevard, where the stars are placed on the sidewalk, was dirty and absolutely packed.  People dress up in costumes so that you can pay for a photo with them.  There were two Michael Jacksons, several Transformers and many other tragics, including one Avatar.  Couldn't wait to get out!  Beverly Hills was of course gorgeous, and we had a quick stop on Rodeo Drive.  Ellen left her phone in the toilet of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, so we had to do a run back there to find it  Thankfully for her we did.

Gotta go.  Leaving soon.  Will continue when we get home!!  Love to everyone!  See you soon.xxx

The Last Day

Today is our day of rest, packing and gearing ourselves up for the flight home.  You should see our room... actually, it's good that you can't see it. Stuff everywhere... I bet Mum can imagine what it looks like!!!  (Having experienced years of my messy rooms...)

Anyway, still updating...  On Saturday we used the second of our two day Disney pass and took ourselves into the other park: California Disney.  It was very hard to get everyone out of bed for an early start after our enormous first day (a word of advice if you plan to do this in the future... leave a day in between and have a sleep in!), but we managed to get into the park by about 8:30 again.  We thought that it would be the same as the previous day and the rides wouldn't be crowded until 10, but we were wrong!  People were EVERYWHERE!  The line for the fast pass for Cars Land rides was SO LONG!!!!  We should have gotten in that line but we kept walking and thought we'd come back later...

We went around to the Paradise Pier which is modelled on the Santa Monica Pier and there were no lines there.  We went on the roller coaster twice- it's brilliant!  We all loved it even Isabel who was a bit hesitant.

This ferris wheel has a bit of a twist... each of the gondola cars is on a loop and as the wheel turns the cars actually swing in mid air.  It is actually quite scary and we were pleased to get off!

There were a lot of brilliant things to see in this park.  The whole place looked like a movie set: Bug's Land, Hollywood, Cars Land... Cars Land was particularly awesome.  Seriously like walking through the movie.  The main ride in there, the cars racers had a line 2.5 hours long... in the sun... so we decided to forego that one.  Looked like fun... we had lunch at Flo's V8 Diner.

There was so much more there to talk about but I'm running out of steam at the moment and Hannah and Thomas have cabin fever and we need to get out of our room.  We are going to have a bit of a walk around the block here, bit of a rough neighbourhood so hope we make it back!  HA HA...

Will get back again later.  Counting down the hours now...

Disney!!!!

It's not until we are without internet that we realise how important it is to us.  The last few days, our internet access has been very slow, so I haven't even bothered to try the blog sorry...

But here I am for a big update.  We are in LA, at the place we started out- the Comfort Inn and Suites.  The place with possible the best brekky of all, and good internet along with 3 big beds.  But, to fill you in on the past three days....

We flew from Seattle, leaving at around 12 noon.  It was amazing flying with Alaskan Airlines and I would recommend them to anyone.   What a difference english speaking attendants make to start with, and the toilets etc were so clean.  Not to mention the plane left on time.  Bit of a shock to have to pay $20 per bag we checked in though...

We easily caught a shuttle to Anaheim, straight to our hotel, which after the Sheraton was a bit hard to get used to.  Probably best to go low budget all the way, then you never know what you're missing!  Anyway, it was adequate, with the best feature being that it was literally ACROSS the road from the Disneyland entrance and believe me, at 10 p.m. after 14 hours of walking that feature made up for everything that was not so great.  We ate at Denny's that night.... gross.... always seems such a good idea but IT IS NOT.

We were up bright and early ready for our first day at Disneyland.... ($200/person.... just throw that in there... do the maths!!!!) and walked through the gates into the main park by about 8:30.  It was so lovely being there at that time because it was really quiet and we could get a sense of the place without 20 trillion people in the way.  The first thing that struck us was how TINY the castle is... it always seems so HUGE!  I didn't really take photos on my phone to show that.. but will up load when I get home.

Anyway we were very lucky to be able to walk into a couple of rides without any wait at all so we went on the Pirates of the Carribean and the equivalent to Seaworld's flume ride.

We were sort of pinching ourselves, trying to comprehend that we were actually in DISNEYLAND... anyway, this ride was great!  Apart from the fact that both Ellen and Thomas ended up soaked at the end, so Ellen was right to be looking like that!   We spent a few hours then looking for new shorts for Thomas, who was wearing heavy denim pants and in serious danger of some chaffing... 

Anyway, for the first hour and a half, we jammed in as many rides as we could before the crowds arrived and by 10 am, the crowds were quite overwhelming!  The lines transformed from a 10 minute wait to 35-45 minutes, but we really didn't mind at all as all lines moved quickly, we had time for an iceblock or drink (it was hot) and the rides were so worth waiting for.  Rides at home seem to be over in a flash, but these were really good value.

Ice Cream sandwich... everything looks like Mickey!

A favourite was the Matterhorn Bobsled ride.  When we went looking for the start of this line, we actually walked for 5 minutes or so around the mountain before finding it.  It was one long line, but really quick and really worth it.

The day went quickly and before we knew it, it was time to get ready for the 6:30 parade.

The parade was fun to watch with all the popular Disney characters throughout the years.  Everyone has so much energy and engaged so completely with the crowd.  

After the parade we raced around to do another couple of rides, and got on the Thunder Mountain ride fairly quickly.  That's not us, by the way, but just to give you an idea of the ride.  Lots of fun!

Not so great at taking selfies.... but you get the idea.

After this ride, we took off to complete our souvenir shopping and got some good advice about where to sit for the fireworks so we hurried to the spot... to find a huge crowd already.  We ended up sitting directly in front of the castle which was perfect and oh my goodness, what a show.  I have never seen anything like it!  Took heaps of pics and won't put many of them here but it was just.... breath taking!

We left very soon after this display, along with LOTS of others.  

A couple of observations;  Disneyland is CLEAN... no rubbish anywhere.  Many people spend their day sweeping, wiping or cleaning up after guests... and because of that, I think people try to be cleaner.

People are happy.  It's always pegged as being the happiest place on earth, and it kind of is.  Given the huge volume of people there, you would expect some line rage or agro of some description, but people are happy... and courteous and considerate etc.  

People wear strange hats, shirts etc.  It seems that you get through the gate and any kind of consideration for fashion is gone.  Lots of people wear Mickey/Minnie/Goofy ears, strange hats, Disney shirts, lanyards full of badges etc etc.  It really is great.

We loved our day.  Worth the big bucks.  Truly. So happy we could do it.  Will update more tomorrow which will be our rest day before we head home.  Love to everyone and we will see you soonXX

Happy 4th!

Out of desperation tonight, I have bought 24 hours of internet access for $10.95!  It seems the flasher the accommodation, the more expensive everything is!  Tonight is our last in Seattle and we have really had a wonderful time here.

We drove in on Monday afternoon and out of sheer luck, realised that there was a drop off place for our rental car literally half a block away from our hotel, so we checked into the Sheraton (our little luxury indulgence for the trip) and drove up the road for the drop off.  It was a bit sad parting with the car and the kids, particularly Thomas, has found it tricky to comprehend the fact that we are carless and HAVE to WALK EVERYWHERE!!!!  Tragic.  Luckily our location is beyond brilliant and we have loved walking out the door to see shops, restaurants, cinemas and everything we could ever need.

We are on the 18th floor in two adjacent rooms.  Ellen and Hannah are in one room, the rest of us in the other, which has worked quite well.  They are watching The Hunger Games at the moment, something Ellen has been desperate to see for ages. It's one of the on-demand movies that we will pay for tomorrow!!!

Yesterday was our shopping day while Bruce and Thomas went to the Flight Museum.  They had an excellent day, catching the bus each way and seeing some good stuff.  The girls and I hit every tacky shop within a 6 block radius and I called it quits about 3 p.m. when the fluro/floral/cutoff denim started to blur together and I couldn't pick where we were.  Clothes are cheaper but in lots of cases, very tacky.    There were a couple of highlights:  LOVE Old Navy- very cheap and some great stuff, Ellen bought Doc Martens boots, Barnes and Noble bookstore... and the sights on the streets.

We saw this guy a few times and his sign reads:  Kissing Lessons,  Visa/MC , Without/With Teeth (Most of them),  $29.95/$9.95 and a few other choice gems!!  We saw him again tonight and actually had a good chat with him.  He is filthy and obviously homeless but rather than purely begging, he puts on a bit of a show.  We have been struck by the number of people begging in the streets.  The kids want to give everyone something and we have had to explain that if we do that, we will be homeless too...  It is good for them to understand that life isn't easy or great for everyone and they need to appreciate what they have and look for ways to help others.

Dinner last night was at the Hard Rock Cafe, where Bruce and I enjoyed steak and veges and we all talked about the various memorabilia and rock history surrounding us.  Good thing it's so light at night- would not like to be walking home from dinner in the dark!

Today is the 4th and we all made sure we had suitably patriotic clothing to wear.  Brekky at McDonald's with wifi!!!  (McDonalds is no longer about food, but being able to use the internet!)  We went from there down to the waterfront to see the Pike Place Public Market and the salmon throwing fishmongers.  They were unfortunately shut down for the holiday, but most other things were open.  We went to the Aquarium, to the Seattle "Big Wheel" (which opened last week) and had lunch overlooking the harbour.

It was freezing lining up, but by the time we got on the wheel, the sky had cleared incredibly and it was much warmer.  We were sitting at the top of the wheel, when Isabel looked over at the car just below us and there was a couple in there- the guy was on bended knee proposing to the woman!!!!   She was putting on the ring and laughing and hugging him then looked up and saw us watching.  We clapped and waved and he gave us the thumbs up- it was exciting to watch!  When we got off, they showed us the ring and we shook hands and she said that she was so happy someone else had seen it happen.  It was lovely.

After lunch we ran into a crazy snake lady on the same corner as the kissing guy had been the day before.  She was standing there with three snakes around her neck and one in her pocket.  The kids went straight over to her and she put a snake around Thomas, Hannah and Ellen's necks and they stood there for ages talking to her.  Of course, we had to give her money (her sign said "The snakes are working for their food" or something to that effect) and it was worth it- what an experience!

From there we took the monorail to the Space Needle (Ellen went home which is why she doesn't appear in our commemorative photo you may have seen on facebook) and were able to see the panoramic view of Seattle on a truly perfect day.

That is actually Mt Rainier- not a cloud- that you can see in the distance.  What a beautiful day.

Other interesting street performers:

These guys were awesome and not much taller than Thomas!

This guy was pretty awesome.  Stood there for hours.

Tonight we ate at the Cheesecake Factory.  I don't even want to imagine the calorie count.  We all got cheesecake to go and I am in the process of making my way through it right now.

Tomorrow we get the Shuttle to the airport and catch a 12 noon plane to LA where we stay opposite Disneyland for three nights.  Will probably go to Disneyland on Friday and Saturday but hopefully will be able to update the blog again.  We are beginning to think about home now.  Only a few days to go now.  Will see everyone very soon.  Much love to you allxxxx  (Hugs and kisses to Nana and Grandadxx)

Shopping!!!

We are in Seattle and feeling the pinch with no free access to wifi other than sitting in Starbucks, where the girls and I are at the moment. Here until the 5th staying on 18th floor at Sheraton. Shopping today while Bruce and Thomas head to the flight centre museum. Will do a proper update soon. Love to all xx

Back to the States

We had such a relaxing time in Canmore that I didn't get back to write about it.  It was a beautiful 3 bedroom suite at the Blackstone Resort.  Each bedroom, along with the lounge, had its own tv, we had a washer/dryer and two bathrooms, along with a full kitchen.  It was wonderful to have a couple of nights to spread out and just relax.  Oh, and get our washing done!

We met up with Blythe, Lara Waters' sister, who lives in Banff.  We had carried 5kg of chocolate and coffee across the globe for her so it was great to meet her and hand over the loot.  Blythe looks so much like Lara and we enjoyed sitting with her for half an hour and hearing about her experiences.  I would have given anything to be able to have Lara sitting there with us too.  

After Blythe left us, we (Bruce, and I with Hannah, Isabel and Thomas) walked down into the main street to have a look at the shops and to get some lunch.  It was really busy with people in town for the Canada Day long weekend and most shops were really full.  We had lunch at a little coffee shop and grabbed some snacks before heading back to our gorgeous home.  

The kids wasted no time in getting into the pool when we got back and it was a good idea because storm clouds built up and we had showers all afternoon.

The kids all lay on their respective beds and watched separate tvs.  Bruce and Thomas borrowed "War Horse" from reception and watched it in the lounge and I had a snooze in our room.  As I said, very restful day.

There were lots of little rabbits hopping around in Canmore, just wild rabbits eating the grass and hopping all over the place.  Thomas got fairly close to one of them and he was pretty excited.  The only other wildlife we've seen in squirrels and this morning a little black bear on the side of the road.  

This morning we reluctantly packed up our oasis and got in the car to start driving again.  Breakfast wasn't included in our room, so we took off down the road to Banff and went in to find somewhere to eat.  It was a great time to be there because the streets were almost empty so we were just cruising along  the main street, looking for a spot for brekky when I saw Raelene McVinish!!!  I called out to her and she followed us around the corner and I hopped out of the car for a chat.  It was pretty amazing that out of that whole town, she should be walking there just as we drove past.  Even though she protested, we managed to get a photo with her and I'll post that when I can download photos from the camera.

On the way to tonight's stop, we passed across the border into Idaho at Kingsgate, but before that we came across a little tourist attraction- mini golf and petting zoo.  To break up the trip we stopped for a game and all enjoyed it, except Ellen, who sat in the car....  The highest number of shots per hole was around 10.  I guess we're not golfers, or putters.

We are in Coeur D'Alene tonight, at Best Western which has become our favourite hotel chain.  We stopped off at Walmart (what a special place, with VERY special people) to buy a new suitcase and backpack.  Wish I had my camera... the tattoos, the bum cracks, the missing teeth, the hairstyles.... it was mindboggling.  One particular case will forever remain burned on my eyeballs: cleavage front and back tattoos in too many places.  Oh my goodness.  

Seattle tomorrow.  There for a few days before flying to LA.  We chickened out of driving... tomorrow we'll drop off our car at Seatac airport.  Will save us some money in fuel, car rental and flights were cheap.  Luckily we have no drop off cost.    It will be great.

Much love to everyone!!!  XXXX