Five elephants in a mini...

Can't remember the answer to how you get five elephants in a mini (take out the giraffe?) - but I think we more than managed it.

Arrived at Sydney airport after an absolutely brilliant flight from Vancouver - we left Vancouver at midnight and because of various complications too dull and long over with to mention here, we didn't even sit down in Vancouver airport so the kids had not slept at all - and consequently slept almost all of the 15 hour flight. Yet more complications in Sydney (couldn't get a porter to help with bags - expected problems at immigration due to lack of visa stamp etc but they asked us NOT ONE QUESTION after all....!!) meant that we didn't make our planned Melbourne flight at 9.30 but got another at 10.30 instead. Also discovered that the later you are running for a flight, the less likely you are to be charged for your extremely overweight baggage as it takes too long. Yee-hah!

Flying the wrong way over the International Date Line though did mean that we skipped Tuesday - left Monday night, arrived Wednesday.... which was weird!

This picture shows us as we finally arrived at Melbourne on Wednesday June 25th in all our jetlagged bedraggled grumpiness. As you can see, Ella is refusing to smile and the boys are only complying under threat of violence...

Having picked up the car, we packed everything in around the children and very nearly didn't manage it... James is in the back of this picture somewhere! At least we wouldn't have to fit everything in the car again as we would be able to make two or three trips from the hotel in Geelong to our house on Saturday.

Found Geelong, found our hotel, found some dinner and found bed!

Spent Thursday morning visiting two possible schools for the boys and Thursday afternoon ordering a houseful of furniture. Very liberating to not have to buy anything to go with stuff you already have... and very astonishing when everything is in stock and you can arrange to have it all delivered on Saturday morning.

Decided on Manifold Heights (http://www.manifold.vic.edu.au) school for the boys on Friday morning then spent Friday afternoon at IKEA in Melbourne picking up all the other bits and pieces for the house. Totally strange to look around the marketplace and think 'I need one of those, one of those, one of those.... oh heck, I need one of everything..' Managed to get everything in the car - just- again and headed back to Geelong for our last night in the hotel.

So finally on Saturday 28th we picked up the keys first thing and moved to our new house...