And away we go

First leg down, the longest one yet to conquer. Gram & Paps made in through two security checkpoints safe and sound.

We flew down from Seattle on the Tinkerbell Disney plane. Yeah, we are that lucky! We are still trying to get the fairy dust off us. if you are going to take a Disney plane tinkerbell is the one to be on....."you can fly you can fly." It may have been another sign from Gram reminding us to think "happy thoughts"

That is where the luck stopped, for Mandy at least, she had the pleasure of sitting next to a screaming two year old. We can't wait to see who she gets to sit next to for the long haul, we bet it will be a doozie. Now would be the time to mention that Mandy does not have the best luck in general. At the movies she usually gets stuck sitting in front of "talkers", at a restroom she is the lady trailing the toilet paper, at a restaurant, she gets the fly in her soup, and on a plane she is bound to sit next to the crying baby, man with BO, or in front of the habitual seat kicker. Jen and I refer to it as "The Candler Curse."

We are still trying to get a grasp on how many hours we will actually be ahead of "home". Somewhere between 17 and 18 hours is what we have settled on. 18 for Melbourne and 17 for Sydney. That means that if it is 9:30pm in Seattle it is 3:30pm the next day in Sydney. Jen is starting to panic at the prospect of not having her phone mainly because of her need to know the name of that one actor in that movie from the 80's and or how hot is 22 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit? Thankfully Mandy will have her phone for such needs, but Jen insists it's just not the same. Maybe she'll be able to take in the view for once, we can hope anyway.

For all the careful packing we did, we really only had the benefit of truly carrying on for the Seattle flight. We were required to check our rolling bags due to weight overages. Quantas only allows 7kg (14lbs?) per bag. Trish's was a whopping 12.8 she was excited to be underweight until she was reminded the scale was in kilograms. :( Jen's was 9.8 minus gram & pappy, who are now riding in a cute plaid bag. Mandy's bag broke the scale, and Jen's shoulder (shhh...don't tell her that.)

Here we go! T&J (pass the Xanax, please)

Jen, looking pleased to be without her phone for 2.5 weeks.

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Location:LAX International Terminal