Bella, Gabe and Josiah

Flying home always makes for a long day, but crossing the international date line makes it even more fun because the day actually repeats itself. We literally landed in LA before we’d left Sydney. Not weird at all… The boys did not want to wake up. Certain little boys were having to much fun watching movies on the flight to want to sleep…and they crashed as soon as we hit LA. But we got to have breakfast with Uncle Matt! I mean, the grown ups did. The boys slept through it. Then slept through the next flight too. But by the time we got to the last flight they were entire too wired to sleep. Crazy kids. But we made it home after 37 hours of traveling, all in one day.

It was our last full day in Australia, so we needed to do all the things we hadn’t gotten to do yet. We also had a car, and wanted to take advantage of that. We started by walking to this cute breakfast spot where we had to walk under a bunch of freeways. When we got there, the last set up a kids table for the boys, complete with books and toys. Then we found this amazing park that the boys could have spent all day in. I’m impressed we didn’t lose either of them… Then we headed out of town to go find the best pie shop in Sydney (according to the random lady we met at LAX). It was a two hour drive and the end of the road could have easily rivaled the Road to Hana, so that was fun, but we made it. Unfortunately, Josy tripped at a gas station that we stopped at for a bathroom break and skinned up both knees and spent the rest of the day declaring that he had to keep his legs bent at all times. The pies were really good. Josy was happier than he let on… Then we found a beach and played in ...

We decided to brave driving on the left side of the road! We got some breakfast and then headed out to the Hunter Valley. It was beautiful! We were actually bummed that we couldn’t spend more time up there. There were vineyards everywhere and in the afternoon, kangaroos hop wild through fields.  Driving on the left side of the road is fun, particularly going over the Sydney Bridge. Actually all of driving in Sydney is bizarre. They have tunnels everywhere and multiple layers of roads. Thank goodness for the gps!! Then we went to this MexTex restaurant that wasn’t actually the best experience, so I won’t say much about it other than that they had hats for everyone. Then we headed home. The city at night is so beautiful!!

After basically two days of travel, we needed a nice slow day. So we slept in and then walked down to get some breakfast at a cute little cafe. Then we went looking for more coffee and stumbled upon a really cool mall with an awesome hobby shop that we spent a long time wandering. I think all three boys could have spent a lot more time here and bought all sorts of things… We went back to the house to change the laundry and the boys informed us that they were heading fun playing just the two of them and they didn’t want to go anywhere. So we let them play for a while and then we went to get lunch. Then we’re took the bus out to Bondi Beach. Given that it was cloudy and there was a bit of rain in the morning, we did not take our swimming stuff, instead we packed sweatshirts. But when we got out there, the sun was out and it was lovely and the boys wanted to swim, but we said no. Instead I took a nap in the sand, Pat went on a walk and the boys played in the sand. Then we got gelato. Beca...

We had one day, really a half of a day, in Brisbane. Unfortunately Bluey’s World didn’t open until the next day, so we literally missed it by a day… We got up and had breakfast at an old church that had been turned into a pancake restaurant. Then we checked out of the hotel and went you the Royal Botanical Garden to explore and let the boys run around. Then we went to the airport, where we discovered that Gabe was very, very hungry. We finally got him some food and then I made him do more homework. We flew back to Sydney and the clouds were amazing!! Our flight was supposed to land at 6:30, which seemed entirely reasonable. But the flight was late and then we had drama getting out rental car and then Pat had to drive on the left side of the road and then we had issues getting into our airbnb because the parking spot was too strange. Anyway, but the time we got inside and dropped our bags it was 9:30 and we still needed dinner. Needless the say, the boys did not make it through dinner. ...