"Are We There Yet?"

(Today's post is brought to you by Christina)

We've made it to Disneyland!

One of our friends who always has a little story to tell or a hiccup along the way, would be pleased to know that we had one too, at the Adelaide airport.

One of the trials currently being trialled (obviously trials are trialled!!) is that you complete an online entry/visa to USA from Australia. It took me ages one day to do it for all of us, as I would complete one page of questions and press the 'continue' button and our internet would disconnect.....one of the joys of living in the country and not having a flawless internet system! So I would have to start at the beginning again and re-enter all the information. I was pretty happy when I had finally finished it all - well I thought I had. The boys and I were fine, we had been approved but Iain wasn't! Now was this on purpose or not?? I think he did wonder for awhile! We had to go and wait for Iain to find a computer area in the airport and do the necessary work so that he could be approved. 40 minutes later, we were getting our bags re-checked in and on our way through.

Our flight to Auckland was excellent...I had been able to select seats that had extra room (without paying extra) and we had our own TV/games screen to entertain us. We should have had an hour at the Auckland airport to swap planes but we were immediately ushered into a check-in line. As part of the extra US security plans we had to be 'frisked' and our bags checked so the males and females were separated into 2 lines. Iain, Ben and Nicholas were completed and on the plane ages before me. Either there were a lot more women flying or maybe women have a lot more 'stuff' in their bags that need to be removed and checked. Our line moved about 2 steps every 20minutes until we were eventually through and boarded.

Iain was hoping to buy some of his kiwi favourites at the airport - pineapple lumps etc but there was no chance of any shopping.

The plane was full, so sleeping was difficult when so cramped. We still had our little TV screens so we watched a couple of movies and played games, but what was really interesting was that you could check out our flying details - ie distance travelled, time remaining of travel, time in various cities etc......probably saved people asking the hostesses- "are we there yet"?
The boys slept for about 5 hours, Iain - 2hours and I was too busy helping the pilots 'to navigate the night skies' to sleep longer than 20 minutes!!! Someone had to be on night watch.

At Los Angeles airport we had fingerprint and eye scans done. When asked why were we visiting the US, instead of just answering 'holiday' Iain gave the poor guard a complete run-down of our holiday. How we have never had a 4 week holiday, as a family, so we had going to Disneyland, then to Universal Studios, and then how we were going to visit his brother-in-law in Ohio......etc etc The guard looked a little bemused!

The first highlight of our trip arrived at the aiport door to take us to our hotel - a black stretch limo - the boys were very excited and we have photos to show, especially to Vincent and Sean (or is that Shaun?). We had chilled soft drinks supplied for the trip and there were little fairy lights embedded in the roof, that changed colour.

As soon as we got to the hotel, we left again to go to Disneyland for a few hours - mainly to keep us awake until evening - and as we had a 3 day pass we wanted to use it as much as possible. Well I think half of the USA were at Disneyland as well and what we couldn't get over, was that they are all happy to line up for 30+ minutes, to wait their turn for a ride! I think us Aussies would complain about that! We went on the Haunted Mansion ride which was really good and checked out others, ready to be there first thing this morning so that our waiting time wasn't so great.....unfortunately Nicholas was sick quite a bit during the night, and added to that we all wanted to keep sleeping this morning... so it was nearly 11am by the time we got to Disneyland. Nicholas and I stayed for a few hours - until he needed to have a rest, so we are at the Hotel now, while Ben and Iain are 'playing'.

The Quote of the Day is brought to you by Ben......"it is very Americanised here"!!!

One other problem is that we have found that our mobile phones won't work, after Iain buying special cards so that they would, and trying them out continously....he's not happy. So if anyone is needing to contact us, email is the best option we will try and check each day.....or if urgent contact my parents - Dean & Rosemary.

We hope those of you living on Yorke Peninsula have survived the influx of holidaymakers - we counted 991 cars from Pine Point to Pt Wakefield on Thurs night - and there was only 1 other car going the same direction as us.