Getting there - Family trip to Utah

We woke at around 3:30am, Tuesday 3^rd May, to have quick showers and do final prep. Emily arrived about 4:05am to take us to the airport in her car and we woke the Children 5 minutes later. Toby had been looking forward to going on the plane for a LONG time, as soon as his eye’s popped open he asked “We going on the airplane mumma?”

By the time we packed the car etc. we arrived at the airport around 4:35am, checked all our luggage and got boarding passes before heading through security and waiting at the gate.

Here’s us out the front of the airport:

The plane ride to Brisbane was three hours and was fairly uneventful, Edie fell asleep and Toby looked out the window most of the way.

We arrived in Brisbane at 9am their time and headed straight to the international airport via the shuttle bus. The kids enjoyed the play area when we arrived:

It didn’t take long for us to be boarding the ‘giant plane’. 

We had great seats at the bulkhead just behind premium economy (we had more leg room than them!) This was so we could make use of a bassinet for Edith. 

She fell asleep on take off and slept for about an hour in the bassinet. Toby was too excited to look out the window and watch peppa pig on the entertainment system to sleep. I had a plane plan which worked out fairly well. I had lots of little toys wrapped up for Toby and Edith but we didn’t use them much. With the food and crawling/walking around we were able to entertain them for the first 6 hours of the flight and then put them ‘to bed’. It worked so well, they both slept most of the rest of the time. Pity I was too excited to sleep! I think Hayden got a quick power nap. 

Nearly there - Here is Toby catching the sunrise over America:

We arrived in LA at 7am their time or midnight our time.

Thanks to Edith we were whisked to the front of the line for both customs and security so we ended up getting out of the international airport quite quickly.

We walked around to Teminal 5 to catch our Delta flight, it took forever to get through security and it was really hot! Toby was getting a little bit tetchy which was understandable so that was the worst bit of the flight. When we finally got to the front the guy said ‘how come you guys weren’t brought through the family line?’ Annoying!

Our flight out of LAX to SLC wasn’t until 10:20am which isn’t that much of a wait but by this time we were so exhausted and over it, it seemed to take forever. As we were lined up to board Toby was singing ‘I Am a child of God’ at the top of his lungs, we figured this was a pretty safe line to do it.

Finally we arrived in Salt Lake and it was great to see Nan/Mum we shared big hugs and tears, just out of sheer exhaustion and relief I think. We picked up our ‘Big Red Car’ (photo in the next post) and with Hayden behind the wheel hit the American roads for the first time. I’m not sure if it was because I was tired or the size of the roads, speed and amount of traffic, but that combined with being on the WRONG SIDE made the 10min ride from the airport to mum’s place the scariest thing I’ve done in a while. My heart was beating SO fast.

By the time we got to mum’s it was about 2pm so we resolved to stay up till 5 before crashing. We did a little bit of talking but it was all a bit of a blur. Mum went out and got Crown Burger for us (which was delicious) and we finally crashed just before 6pm. Unfortunately Edith had other ideas and woke at 9pm ready to go! We tried rocking, a drink, Hayden took her for ‘the best walk ever’ around temple square’ and then finally I fed her (this did the trick) and at midnight she went back to sleep. As did we.

We had agreed to meet mum about 11am for lunch, needless to say we were late by the time we got up and going and dragged ourselves out the door.