Friday, February 19, 2016

The start of an adventure

We left Hervey Bay on February 5th for a 6 month adventure to the US.  We decided to get to the airport a little earlier than our first domestic flight called for.  This turned out to be a good thing as we waited at check-in for an hour or so.  Apparently the fact that our Australian passports didn't have a visa attached for travel was an issue that had to be taken careofb  y someone with more authority than the person we were talking to.  This was finally taken care of just in time for us to go through security and board the plane.  EXCEPT just as we arrived at our gate the lady called out Josh's name.  They thought we still needed to pay $700 in excess baggage fees!!!  The passport stuff wasn't coming through fast enough so the man at the check-in desk had used someone else's computer to get the second batch and in so doing it looked like 5 of us had luggage for all 9 of us.  Anyway, we finally got on the airplane without any fees.  Everyone was quite excited to be flying.  Naomi got to sit by a window and kept saying "This is the best day ever!!!"  Nathan got scared about half way through the flight to Sydney as it suddenly dawned on him that we were just a big huge metal tube up in the air.  ;)  He settled down as soon as he moved to sit by me and it didn't bother him the rest of the trip.  We arrived in sydney and had a quick trip on the bus to the international airport then on to the gate where we got to board immediately.  We did sit for a few minutes as they had to fix an issue with the toilets then we were off to America!!
 Just a bit of luggage!

 our mountain of luggage as we waited an hour at check-in
 on the first flight the kids got a mini burger and a mini hotdog


  They spent a lot of time on the iPads and watching tv/movies.  They all got a good amount of sleep though.