let the adventure begin...

So now that we finally have internet at the house, I can quit blogging on paper! I'm so excited. I'll be playing a little catchup here over the next few days. Bare with me. Hope you all enjoy...

We arrived in Brisbane @ 6:30 am. Both girls did excellent on the flights. Aubrey was excited to sit next to the window. She slept almost the entire time. We were upstairs business class. Joel sat next to Aubrey and then I sat across from them with Mary Lyn. There was no one sitting next to me so that was nice to have an aisle to ourselves. Mary Lyn barely cried. People didn't even know that we had a baby with us.  Also on the flight was singer Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins. He sat a few rows back from us. I went to his concert back in 1997 in Sioux Falls but it was much cooler seeing him in person up close.

We checked had so many bags! We had 6 carryons and checked 7 bags + 1 bike! We were quite the sight. It was ALMOST embarrassing lol. We had to have help with our bags out to the car. We had so many bags, they waived us through customs! Yes, we DIDN'T HAVE TO GO THROUGH CUSTOMS! How crazy is that?! We had so many bags that there was a trailer hooked to the van that picked us up!

And no, not all of our bags fit in the trailer. So 45 minutes later we arrived at our new home! So Joel went to get new carseats and the rental car. Hmm, what to eat?

We had some OJ, small bananas and some questionable fruit. Notice the huge ring of keys above. Those are our house keys! How crazy is that to have a different key to every door and and window? So Joel went to McDonalds.

I mean when you are 4 yrs old, who doesn't want a chocolate calciyum with your lunch? So after a trip to the grocery store, we had dinner outside. Aubrey screamed the entire time because of all the bugs. Flies mainly. Poor girl. Hopefully she will get used to them soon. Then she actually requested to go to bed. We found the biggest cockroach that I've ever seen in the living room. Luckily Aubrey was already in bed. It was about the size of my palm. So gross.

This is Aubrey on one of the first days. Poor girl skinned her knee outside on the brick walk. And she fell down the stairs (as you can see we only have 4 of them) and hurt her foot.

Day 2 wasn't much better. Joel went to work. We have a bus stop that's right outside our front door. So he takes a direct express 30 minute ride downtown. It's quite handy. I was trying to find the garage door key but I couldn't find it among the millions of keys on the keyring. I tried to use the dishwasher but I couldn't get it to turn on. So I had to wash all these new "rental" kitchenware dishes etc by hand. Ugh.

So then I tried to do laundry. And I had a LOT of laundry to do. It seemed to be going well. But as i started the 3rd load I noticed water gushing all over the garage floor. So that was the end of the doing laundry for the day. I didn't get a chance to go back out to the garage until after Joel got home. It turns out that the washing machine hose wasn't tightened correctly. And there is a tube that is supposed to  drain the water into a laundry sink from the washing machine. And that tube had fallen out on the floor. So now I always double check to make sure the tube is properly installed beforehand. There wasn't too much damage. We only had some empty luggage bags in the garage.

So we went to the grocery store Woolworths (Wooly's) near our house after Joel got home from work. It's not a great one but it will do. Aubrey went right to bed again. Afterwards we found this inside. I'm so glad Aubrey was already in bed.

We have all kinds of small lizards outside at nighttime. They like to hang out on our front windows by the front door. It has been an eventful first couple of days in Australia!