Thursday--Blizzard Beach

Mt. Gushmore peak

Because US schools are on vacation this week the crowds at Disney World are more than we were expecting. Thankfully they'll all be going home over the weekend leaving us with fairly empty parks to visit next week. So because of this we decided to avoid the more popular parks for a few days. In the morning we checked the Weather channel and discovered that today was going to be the warmest day for the next seven days. So we decided on the spur of the moment to go to Blizzard Beach rather than Disney Hollywood Studios as we had originally planned.

It was just warm enough to enjoy the water rides at Blizzard Beach. Paul and the kids went on most of the rides while I enjoyed the wave pool, cross-country creek (sitting in an inner tube while it went on a circuit of the park--no rapids, nothing scary, just a few splashes along the way). Jade and Jarrah tried walking along ice floes in the ski patrol training area. Yes this park has a snow/ski theme to it just to give it a difference.





It is interesting to compare this park with Wet n Wild in Queensland. WnW had more thrill rides involving vortexes whereas this park had two rides that came nearly straight down from a very high mountain.

We left the park about 4pm to catch a bus to Animal Kingdom where we had a dinner reservation at Tusker House Restaurant. We arrived at Animal Kingdom just in time for the end of the day parade which blocked our path to the restaurant. As one cast member (Disney employee)said, it didn't matter if we were late as this was Disney and they would understand. The restaurant was in a whitewashed weathered building which was possibly African looking. We were ushered to our seats, drink orders were taken (I ordered Sangria) and we were told it was all we could eat from the buffet. Jade was thrilled with this as she is on the child dining plan for children 9 and under and her portions have been a bit small for her. The food was wonderful with Middle Eastern, Indian and African inspired dishes. I had chicken curry with rice, flat bread with hommus and tabouli and a samosa for dinner. It was just fabulous. These meals are what will make the dining plan worthwhile. There's only so much pizza, hot dogs and burgers a person can take.

Wednesday--first full day at Disney

Wednesday was our first full day at Disney. We went back to the cafeteria
at our resort for breakfast. As I mentioned we have a dining plan included with our stay. This plan includes one counter meal, one snack and one table service meal per person per day. The table service meals need to be reserved ahead of time so we'd already missed out on using our first day's allotment of that meal. We were totally in the dark,however about what exactly constituted a snack and what constituted a counter meal so when we went to the cafeteria and put what we wanted on our trays the cashiers had to help us figure out how to group the items so that they made up either a meal or a snack. Consequently we've bought too much food and gone beyond our daily allotment of counter meals and snacks. So now we have to watch our meal usage by either cutting back and eating our own food or by paying for a couple of snacks so that we get back on track. As I said there is a system involved which takes some time to figure out.

Anyway, after breakfast we boarded our Disney motor coach transport shuttle bus to Epcot. We decided to go to Epcot and I had a lot to do with that decision. It was partly because I knew there weren't many rides there--and I needed a day to recover from the flights--and partly because I wanted to see the exhibits from the various countries.

Our first stop was the Finding Nemo ride where we sat in clam shells and went along a belt through an undersea world. Lovely and calm and this kept the ride-lovers happy. Then we went on to all of the national displays starting with Canada. Canada had a 360 degree movie narrated by Martin Short. It was funny and educational and had beautiful scenery too. Below is Jarrah sitting near the totem poles at the Canada pavillion.



We then went on to France for lunch--what a good choice. Jade had a croissant and Jarrah had quiche. France also had a film show but this one was accompanied by French classical music including Saint-Saens Organ Symphony as the finale.

The American pavillion was the largest, of course, and featured a show summarising American history performed by very life-like robotic actors. Prior to the show we were entertained by a group of singers dressed in period costume singing beautifully in parts. After the show outside the pavillion a colonial fife and drum group marched past us.



Many of the countries' pavillions mainly featured gift shops and restaurants without any other sort of cultural display. We homed in on the ones which had films or other shows and China was one of these. The China pavillion had a 360 degree film narrated by Li Bai, a Tang dynasty poet, who spoke about famous sights and some of the minority peoples in China. The show was in the Temple of Heaven, which we'd visited for real just about a year ago. The China gift shop was huge and Jade and I spent a bit of time looking around in it. Jade finally chose a leopard soft toy to go with her growing animal collection. I guess there are leopards in China.



We pretty much finished with Epcot after this as the rides had long wait times and there wasn't anything else much to do there. We returned to our hotel and had another quick service meal--probably our last as a dinner as I went to the hotel concierge as was finally able to book a series of table service dinners for the coming evenings.

Tuesday travel

We farewelled my Dad and Connecticut on Tuesday as we flew from Tweed-New Haven airport to Philadelphia to Orlando, Florida. Probably the less I say about the trip the better. The plane from New Haven to Philly was a 37-seater prop jet. The flight was rough on take-off and even rougher coming in to land. I was sick. Very sick. Continuously for the last half hour of the flight. I am not a good flyer.

In Philly we blissfully got on a 737 jet to Orlando. But I still wasn't quite right so the turbulance on take-off which I normally would have weathered set me off again.

Tweed-New Haven Airport is a very small airport. Only one airline-US Air-services it and they use small planes. I've never flown from Tweed before and I'd probably need to have my head examined before I do it again. But I don't regret doing it this time. I was the only one of us who was sick but Jade said she came close and movement doesn't generally bother her--as you would expect with a gymnast.



Once we arrived in Orlando we were whisked into the Disney universe. Everything was smooth and streamlined. We checked into the Disney transport at the airport and were soon on a bus running directly to our hotel--Port Orleans Riverside. At the hotel we checked-in and then wheeled our suitcases to our room which is on the second (US system) floor of a New Orleans mansion-styled building. Among the many extras I booked into our Disney package I included a dining plan to cover most meals. The plan includes one table service meal per day--this would normally be used for dinner. We learned, however, that we need to make a dinner reservation in order to use this and as we'd arrived at dinner time it was too late to do so for that day. So we were forced to opt for a cafeteria-style meal for the evening. More about the meals later.

Monday pack up

Another early morning for Jade as she headed off to CATS gymnastics for her second and final training session there. she was really looking forward to seeing the girls she'd met the previous week. I left Jade there for the 3.5 hour training session and came home to take the Christmas tree down and pack. Jarrah helped me with the tree and finished it off for me when I left to get Jade again.



The morning training group

When I picked Jade up I took a photo of Jade and some friends in her Level 7 group. One girl didn't come today and Jade was sad not to have a photo of her.



Jade is getting over her heel and elbow injuries and did a back handspring on the low beam and a front aerial on floor today. I hope that 2010 is an injury-free year for her.

The rest of today we've been doing laundry and packing. I bubble-wrapped Jarrah's new baseball bat and it fits nicely into the black (extra) suitcase along with other things we've bought to bring back. I've bubble-wrapped the glass pie dish I bought at Walmart to make pies in and put that in my carry-on pack. I've been looking for a pie dish for a few years now in Australia unsuccessfully.

We don't know what it's going to be like flying tomorrow with the new restrictions.

We'll be travelling all day tomorrow and won't get to our hotel probably until 6pm or so. I can't imagine what this next phase of our trip is going to be like. It's going to be very different from what we've been doing so far.

Busy Sunday

Jade and I went with Dad to church this morning. It was a lovely service and the kids put on a nativity play during it which I thought was very nice. Jade really enjoyed it too. The pastor is lovely and very interesting to talk to. He is Canadian with a German and French Canadian background. I took a photo of Dad and him after the service.



We then dropped Dad back at the house and went to meet Jade's penpal Leah who is also adopted from China and is 10. We spent a few hours chatting with her and her mother at a Burger King. There seem to be quite a lot of older adoptees here in CT. Some are even in their 20s and at college and many are in their mid-teens. It is quite a different situation to Australia where more than 3/4 of China adoptees are pre-schoolers and younger.



I've also made contact again with another family who have a 13 year old son from China who was exchanging emails with Jarrah a couple of years ago. Somehow the boys lost contact but now they are going to start to email each other again.

Jade and I got home about 4:30. Poor Paul had been working all day weeding and chopping down self-sown saplings in the garden as well as cleaning up after the washing machine flood in the cellar. Jarrah was helping him too. I felt so guilty leaving them to do all that work. But that is the sort of thing he loves to do--at least the yard work part. Dad has already organised for someone to come and chop up and take away all the cuttings.





We'd all been so busy that we almost forgot that the kids were going to go ice skating in the evening. We remembered just in time and all piled into the car to go over to the skating rink at Hamden High. The kids skated for about 1.5 hours and had a great time. The rink was bright and clean and beautiful--a far cry from the dingy old rink in Melbourne. We've certainly crammed in a lot this trip but there never seems to be enough time.

Another Saturday shopping day

I see my post about last Saturday was also labelled a shopping day! There seems to be a pattern here!

On Saturday we got up early so that we could take Jade to gymnastics training at CATS gymnastics. Her session was supposed to start at 10. The plan was to drop her then for Paul, Jarrah and I to go over to North Haven to the shopping centres there where there is a Sports Authority store as well as a Barnes & Noble. However, when we got to the gym there was a sign on the door that all training sessions for Saturday were cancelled. Surprisingly though the door to the gym was unlocked. I went inside and called out to see if anyone was there so I could be sure about the cancellation. No one was there and there weren't any cars parked outside either. I was really surprised that they'd leave the gym unlocked like that. We decided to sit in the car for a few minutes to make sure no one was going to come then a car arrived with one of the girls that Jade had trained with last Monday. She didn't know about training being cancelled either. Now we're not sure about Monday's training time as the note on the outside door said training times this week would be as usual--ie 3:30 start--whereas another note in the gym and the email I'd been sent indicated Monday's training was going to start at 9am.

Anyway, with no gym the four of us were able to go shopping together. We got Jarrah a new baseball bat and a warm-up weight for it. We also got some craft things at Michael's Art & Craft and some US flash sheets about the 50 states, branches of government and weights and measures at Barnes & Noble.

After shopping we swung by the house and picked up Dad to eat a late lunch at the Glenwood Drive-In http://www.glenwooddrivein.com/



I love the hot dogs there even better than Jimmy's in West Haven so this was a treat I look forward to each time I come.

We dropped Dad and Paul back home after and the kids and I went to visit some old family friends, the Kompares. Maria and Tony are old friends of my parents and I know I've been bad about not making time to see them on previous trips so this time especially since I had the kids with me I wanted to be sure that we went to visit. We had a lovely time chatting with them and their son, Tony who I grew up with and who is my age, and also was there. I'm just sorry I didn't get a chance to see his sister Ione who lives in northern CT in Storrs as I haven't seen her for 13 years. I guess next time I'll have to be sure to make time to see her.

Christmas Day overload!

On Christmas Eve Dad, the kids and I went to the Christmas service at Dad's church. The service started at 11pm but Dad had to be there early as he is in the choir and had to rehearse. The kids and I spent about an hour sitting reading and listening to our ipods in the church hall playroom while he was doing this.

The church was beautifully decorated with many poinsettia plants and the service was very nice. Jade stayed awake all though it which I was surprised about.

We got home about 1am and the kids went straight to bed under instruction that present opening wasn't going to take place before 8am.

On Christmas morning I was surprised I woke up about 7:30. Jarrah was awake and Jade woke up hearing us talking. We began opening presents about 8 and it took 2 hours to get through them all. Wow! Dad got quite a few and considering we'd already opened presents in Australia a couple of weeks before this the kids did pretty well getting as many presents as they did. these were mainly presents from their aunts and unclebut there were also some from 'Santa' which were things I'd bought online and had shipped to Dad's address.

Dad/Grandpa got quite a few presents including a book of recipes from Jarrah that he'd tested and typed up and a book Jade made called her book of favourites.



After opening presents Dad, Jarrah and I got the Christmas dinner of ham underway. We sat down to eat it about 3pm and it was delicious--Virginia baked ham, candied sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, salad and stove-top stuffing (Jade's choice). While we were trying to get the meal on the table my brother and sister had called and we'd arranged to call them both back after we finished eating which we did.

It was a really nice family Christmas that I'm sure both Dad and the kids are going to remember.

Getting ready for Christmas

Thursday was the 'get ready for Christmas' day. Jarrah finished baking by doing a batch of butter cookies. I did some wrapping. Paul went out in the yard and did some major pruning of some tall poplar saplings that had self-seeded. He also pulled out a dead rosebush and rhodendendron. He loves getting into yard work like that! We also had another quick trip to Walmart and I gave in and bought a frozen pumpkin pie rather than making one. We'll see how it tastes.

We have a problem in the cellar in that there is a bit of a flood starting from near the washing machine and we don't know what to do about it. It's soaked several of the carpet pieces that are on the floor but I can't put them out to dry out or they'll just freeze.



Here is Jade finishing sprinkling the sour cream cookies.

NYC

On Wednesday we spent the day in New York City. We got up at 5:30am so we could get an early train. Dad drove us to New Haven station, we bought our tickets--peak fare, no discounts--and we boarded the train for the approximately 1.5 hour trip to the city. I tried to get our tickets online on the Metro North website but the system they use is outdated. You have to book your tickets at least two to three days ahead of time because they mail them to you rather than enabling you to print them off yourself! Onine tickets save a bit of money. Our tickets ended up costing about $120.

We got into Grand Central Station about 8:30 and then took the subway shuttle to Times Square. The station exit didn't quite face the well-known view of the square so we ended up walking away from it for a block, then turned north along 8th Avenue to 43rd street before walking back to the square to have a look at it. The kids were not impressed. Jarrah wanted to know why an street intersection was worth looking at! Paul took some video and I took a couple of pictures then we returned to 8th avenue and took a bus to the American Museum of Natural History--the museum that features in Night at the Museum.



The statue of Teddy Roosevelt on his horse was still standing guard out in front. When we entered we had to go through a bag check. Paul keeps insisting on carrying his Swiss Army knife so this was a problem as knives and other weapons are confiscated so before he went in he hid the knife in his video bag. I wish he wouldn't insist on carrying this knife in his pocket all the time! We bought our tickets from an automatic machine. $80 for the 4 of us! The museum was worth every cent though. It is really magnificent. In the main entrance foyer there are two dinosaur skeletons. One of them is a herbivore with a very long neck and it is standing on its back legs stretching up as if to eat from the top of a tree. I wish I'd taken a photo of it.





We wandered through the second floor where the main entrance is then went up to the 4th floor to see the dinosaurs and down to the third floor. By then it was lunch time so we went to the lower level to eat in the cafeteria there. The food there included a lot of healthy choices and wasn't expensive. Jade wasn't impressed with the salad bar and in this cold weather I must say I agree although it seemed to be a popular choice.

After lunch we had about an hour before our planetarium show. I wanted to see the rocks and minerals but it was diagonally opposite where the planetarium was and on a different floor so we decided it was too far away so we looked through the astronomy section instead. This also included a lot of rocks and was very interesting.

The planetarium show was very good. The theatre was huge and despite the crush to get in there had a lot of empty seats available. The show was called 'Journey to the Stars' and was about the life-cycle of stars--a bit different from the usual type of planetarium show. Whatever the show was they used to always look at the sky above NYC at the end of the show and discuss what constellations and planets were visible but they've cut that out of the show now. I guess that's to keep the show to about 20 minutes so they can turn the audiences over faster.

After the planetarium show we'd had enough of the museum so we went out and walked along Central Park West looking into Central Park as we went. Paul had wanted to walk through Central Park but some of the paths hadn't been cleared and looked slippery so we decided not to. At 72nd Street we went into the park to look at the Strawberry Fields memorial to John Lennon. This consisted of the word 'Imagine' done in a circular mosaic in the path.

A busker was there giving people a lot of background information about the memorial and he was very interesting. One of the things he said was that there wasn't a statue of John Lennon there because Yoko didn't want birds to poop on it. As we went out of the park I saw a building which I thought was the Dakota Building where John and Yoko lived (and where Yoko still lives) so I crossed over to see it and also took a photo of it. There wasn't any indication of the building's name nor any plaque about John being shot there so I wasn't sure if it was the Dakota. I've just checked on wikipedia and it was so I'm glad I took a photo.



We then took a subway back to near Times Square (to the Port Authority bus terminal) and started looking through various souvenir shops. Jade had seen a Yankees shop before and we found it again luckily as Jarrah wanted to buy something Yankees as his souvenir. He got a pennant and beanie both of which say 'Yankees World Champions 27 times 2009'. He's thrilled with those. Jade had already chosen her souvenir as a small bag of coloured polished stones from the museum. Paul had got a plastic drinking cup from the museum and I bought a navy New York City t-shirt. I love navy t-shirts!

We had dinner near the souvenir shops then took the subway shuttle back to Grand Central and took the train home. From New Haven station we got a taxi and the driver was very talkative and also very interesting. He is a Muslim as most of the limo/taxi drivers seem to be but he's married to a Jewish woman who is a professor at Southern CT State University and they have 2 sons. He was very open-minded in his approach to religion and seemed to be very happy where he is in his life. His family had just had a holiday on a Carribean island and they'd also been to another island last year. When I was growing up in CT there weren't any Muslims here that I ever met anyway. The ethnic mix now seems to be changing quite dramatically from the Irish-Italian-WASP groups that were here before. I don't know if this means that some ethnic groups are moving elsewhere to make room for the newcomers or if the population is just becoming more densely packed. The US population is increasing significantly so perhaps it is the latter. East Asians, though, are few and far between still here.

Cookie baking and tree decorating

The title tells it all. Today was a Christmas preparation day. Jarrah and Dad were busy baking cookies (Great-Grandma Wright's chocolate and sour cream cookies) while Jade and I set up the tree. I actually wanted to get a real tree as a special treat but when I couldn't find the tree stand in the attic, decided to stick with the artificial. Dad has a really nice 6.5 foot artificial tree which he hasn't used for about 6 years so we brought that up from the cellar and collected the ornaments from cellar and attic to decorate it. It looks really nice. (I know I'm being really slack about uploading photos!)



Tomorrow we're off for a day trip to New York City and we plan to get up at 5:30 and down to the train station by 6:45. It's going to be a long day and I don't think I'll be blogging about it until Thursday.

Monday--shopping and gym training

I know this is just yesterday I'm writing about but it's hard to remember what we did all day and where the time went.

The kids, Dad and I went out shopping again--this time for incidentals. We picked up a few more items for Christmas dinner and decided to do a ham rather than a turkey. I think there are more leftover possibilities with ham for Dad as opposed to turkey so he was happier with this choice. We went to Staples as I wanted to get the 3 pack of Windows 7 which is about $100 cheaper here than it is in Australia. Unfortunately, Microsoft have stopped selling these as they've realised they can sell three individual licenses of Windows 7 for $119 rather than the 3 pack for $149. The main reason I wanted Windows was for its video editing which is supposed to be good. So now I have to decide on another software to edit our videos from China. I'm almost ashamed to say it's been a year and I still haven't gotten around to doing anything with those videos. If anyone has any video editing software recommendations I'd be glad to hear them. I did manage to pick up a memory card reader though as mine seems to have a problem.




We then went back home for a quick lunch then Paul and I took Jade to a gym I'd found on the internet for a training session. The gym is CATS gymnastics (www.catsgymnastics.net) The CATS stands for Cheshire Acrobatic Training School and it's located in Cheshire, CT-the next town north of Hamden where we are staying. Jade is going there to train with a US level 7 group. This is supposed to be the level closest to the one she trains at in Australia (IDP 5). The staff at the gym were very welcoming and Jade was made to feel right at home. She made friends with four or so of the girls in her group. The girls were quite fascinated with Jade's Aussie accent and were asking her to say certain words again and again. For her part Jade loved listening to their American accents. Jade trained for 3.5 hours from 3:30 to 7pm and Paul and I stayed the whole time in case she wanted to leave early or wasn't happy with something. Jade actually loved it and wants to go back so we'll be taking her back on Saturday morning for another session. Just out of interest I took a photo of the competition schedule for this gym. They do a bit of travelling to compete!



After we returned home to a lovely dinner of spaghetti and meatballs which Jarrah and Dad has whipped up. Yum!

Sunday shovelling and cleaning

It snowed all night Saturday night and on Sunday morning everything was covered with about 8 inches of snow. The kids were really excited and wanted to go out and shovel. Dad actually found my child-sized snow shovel and gave this to Jade to use. (I know I must take some pictures to put with these posts.) It didn't take long before the kids figured out that shovelling snow was hard work. I went out and had a go myself. I don't think I've shovelled snow for over 30 years! It all comes back though like riding a bike.



After shovelling off the sidewalks and even doing the neighbor's path up to their house (they always do Dad's sidewalks for him so I thought it would be nice to pay them back a bit) the kids made snow angels and then Jade tried to make a snowman but the snow was a bit too dry and powdery to stick together.




Paul and I came inside and then started to do some housecleaning. We spent the afternoon cleaning. Paul did the vacuuming, the kids dusted and I sorted through things and also cleaned out the fridge. Dad isn't able to do much cleaning himself because he gets tired so we were glad to be able to help him out. He is 91 and is doing great to still be living independently!

In the evening Jarrah cooked quesidillas and did a great job with them. At dinner we discussed what we're going to do during the week. Baking Christmas cookies is on the cards but we'll probably have to go out and get ingredients for them. I don't know how I'm going to go driving in snow. It was one thing just to have to remember which side of the road to stay on but another complication to have to deal with sliding and skidding at the same time. We'll see how I go!

Saturday shopping day

Saturday was a busy day because our first priority was sending off our Christmas packages to my sister in South Carolina and brother in Colorado since we won't be seeing them this trip. Ideally I had hoped to do this from LA but we just didn't have the time since we arrived late afternoon and had a 7:15 morning flight out. Anyway, everything was ready in our extra suitcase--two collapsed boxes already addressed, presents, pre-cut wrapping paper labelled for each present, gift labels, Xmas cards, tape and packing tape to seal the boxes. I wrapped the presents and sealed up the boxes and then about 11am we headed off (with Dad driving) to Fedex in North Haven to mail them.

That was done successfully so we then went on a shopping trip to Walmart for pj's for Jarrah. Unfortunately there was nothing his size so we compromised with a long-sleeved t-shirt and fleece track pants. Dad wanted to stop in to Goodwill as well as he'd seen a couple of nice baseball gloves a few days before that he wanted to show Jarrah. Unfortunately they were gone but Jade and I looked through the store and found a few treasures which we bought--two leotards and a gorgeous emerald green (her favourite colour) velvet dress with a glittery bolero-style vest attached to it. One of the leotards was also quite a find--a GK black velvet long-sleeved one with clear jewels on it. This would be about $100 new and there it was for $5! What a bargain! I know it must seem weird to be going to what we call an 'op' shop as one of the first things we do in the States. This shop though is one of the most organised second-hand stores I've ever seen. Everything is laid out beautifully on racks and the clothes are even hung by colour so all of the reds, greens, etc are hanging together. I've bought some gorgeous denim dresses there for Jade in the past and was hoping to find some more this time but no luck.

Once we finished there we went to have lunch at the China Buffet Restaurant at the Hamden Mart. The kids love these sort of 'all you can eat' places. I would consider the food at this place moderately Americanized Chinese food. It is good for what it is but it doesn't really have the more authentic Chinese flavours. To appeal to local tastes among the buffet offerings was also pepperoni pizza slices and garlic bread. Why not? There is also a huge flat wok like the one we've seen at a Mongolian BBQ restaurant in Melbourne and you can select your own ingredients and get the chef to cook them up in front of you. Jarrah did that and chose a Teriyaki sauce but when he sat down to eat it said the sauce just tasted like a barbecue sauce and not real Teriyaki. This restaurant had a lot of patrons and it was interesting to see a wide range of ethnic groups including Afro-Americans eating there. I think only one group of diners were Asian and they were more elderly. One lady in this group was watching Jade choose her dishes. Jade asked me the name of one dish that was labelled pork fried rice and when I told her what it was she said 'Yummy' and the Asian grandma laughed and smiled at that. The labelling of the dishes was haphazard as, for the most part, the labels didn't correspond to the dishes so ther was a bit of guess-work involved in choosing what to eat. I had some nice beef and onion in a sauce with rice and I tried a spring roll which wasn't very good.

After lunch we still had grocery shopping to do and I haven't mentioned we were operating on a short time-frame as a blizzard was coming and was supposed to hit about mid-day. Luckily it hadn't started yet. We took Dad home as he'd had enough excitement for the day and the four of us, with me at the wheel, headed out to Stop & Shop. This was the first time I'd driven on the right side of the road for quite a few years so I took it carefully especially when turning corners. I didn't really have any problems on the road but in parking lots I had to keep reminding myself to keep right.

Stop & Shop, although I've been there before on other trips, is always an eye-opener. The variety of food is amazing. Salad dressings, for example, take up half of the length of an aisle. And there must be a dozen brands of pancake maple syrup taking up a good one and a half meters of shelving and stretching from top to bottom. In Melbourne if you blink you will miss the maple syrup as I think there are only 2-3 brands hidden up high on the shelf in the cake mix aisle. Every type of food has a dazzling array of choices. About one of the only foods I can think of where we have more choices is in instant noodles--what are called Ramen noodles here.

We bought milk, bread, snacks, breakfast cereal (Jade thought cinnamon flavoured cereal was a yuck flavour) and meat and tortillas to make quesadillas for dinner. Jarrah enjoyed using the self-service check out which, here, is designed equally for large purchases in that there is a conveyor belt to put your purchases on after you have scanned them. In Melbourne, self-service is just beginning and the couple of stores that have it have it designed for people making small purchases. There is no conveyor belt after the scanner. Instead there is only the bag rack for you to put your purchases directly into bags after scanning. If you were to buy a week's groceries you'd end up with full bags all over the floor at your feet.

We came out of S & S about 4pm and the sky was dark grey and looked like it was going to start snowing very soon. We made it home before the snow which started about 5-6pm.

We've arrived in CT

We landed in NYC just after 3pm on Friday, collected our bags and called the limousine to take us up to CT. While we were waiting at the terminal we grabbed a snack of hot dogs and corn muffins. The hot dogs were really good but I didn't like the corn muffin that much. It was a little too sweet for me.

Our limo (it was in reality a van) came only 10 minutes after we called and we travelled directly to the door of my Dad's house arriving about 7:30. It was really convenient to be taken right to the door. I must remember the name of this company. It is Prime Time but is changing its name to Go.

It was great to see Dad again, especially for the kids as they haven't been here for about 3 and a half years.

We settled in and chatted and before we knew it it was time to hit the sack. Tomorrow will be a bit busy as Jarrah forgot his pj's so we're going to go out shopping to get him some and also to get a supply of food and snacks.

We're in the air right now!!!

We're in the air right now! We just left LA about half an hour ago and we're flying over some mountains dusted with snow. The ground looks very brown and dry. American Airlines has gogo internet inflight so I thought I'd use this unique opportunity to go online and blog. Jarrah is also waiting for me to check the cricket scores for him.



Our flight to New York is about 5 hours and we'll take a limousine up to Connecticut to Grandpa's house after that.

Our cell phones are now connected to T-mobile and charged up but we can't use these inflight obviously.

We didn't sleep very well last night. Our Radisson hotel room had two double beds--I was expecting queen size--and we found these rather squishy. Jade also had a nightmare and yelled out about midnight. I was sleeping well until then but couldn't get back to sleep afterwards until about 3am. We had a wake up call at 4:30.

Impressions so far--I'm noticing that I'm having a bit of trouble understanding people--at least the official people we've had to deal with in person or on the phone. People seem to speak very quickly and even mumble a bit and they also don't explain things very well--like when they give directions they kind of vaguely wave somewhere without telling you exactly where to go. For example, when the guy at the hotel desk gave us directions to the In-n-Out Burger place last night he said to go right and walk about a mile but we weren't sure if he meant right out the door of the hotel and then straight or to go down the street and then turn right at the corner. I had to ask him if the restaurant was on West Century Boulevard (the hotel's address) or another street and then he told us it was on Sepulveda Blvd which was the corner where we had to turn right. So there were actually two 'rights' involved in the directions but he only gave us one.

I also had a bit of trouble understanding the T-mobile guy on the phone last night. He spoke very softly--it didn't help that my roommates were talking while I was trying to hear him either. I don't recall having so much trouble understanding people on previous trips so maybe this is just all a coincidence right now. I'll have to see what it's like when we get to the East Coast.

Oh we are just flying over the most gorgeous snow-dusted mountains now! I just took a photo but unfortunately there is a large aircraft engine in part of the photo. I guess it needs to be there to keep us up!

Here is a photo of Long Island as we are coming in to land.



I have to conserve my laptop battery as I have no way to recharge it on the flight so I'll finish for now.

It's still December 17 and we're in LA

We're in LA and this is our hotel for tonight right at the airport. We had a great trans-Pacific flight on V Australia. The planes are beautiful and new with state-of-the-art entertainment systems. The food and the service was good and the seats seemed quite wide and comfortable.

The worst part of the flight was having to fly to Sydney and then go through the check-in process a second time to receive our boarding passes. When we've flown to the US before through Sydney with any other carrier we've received all boarding passes in Melbourne and not had to check in again.

The temperature in LA when we landed at about 4:30 pm was 19 degrees C. So that coupled with the fact that it was dark by the time we got out of the terminal meant that we didn't use the hotel pool as we had planned. Instead we went for a walk down Sepulveda Blvd. to an In-n-Out Burger place right next to one of the main airport runways. We had a lovely dinner of burgers and fries while an amazing drive through line with about 20-30 cars snaked past the door. Everytime the door of the restaurant opened we heard the roar of a plane as it flew right past the door as it landed. I clocked them and the planes were landing every 3 minutes. As we walked back to the hotel we stood below the flight landing path and I waved and screamed as each plane flew overhead. I've taken a few photos of a couple of 'LAX' signs and will post them later. Jarrah is waiting to use the computer and we're about to try to get some sleep.

Today's the day!

We're off to the airport in less than an hour. I think we have everything. The technology things are what I'm a bit worried about (cameras, ipods and DS's) because there are four of us and different devices recharge differently so you need a range of cords and plugs (and plug adaptors) for them. So we've got USB chargers for the ipods and DS's available in our carry-on bags because we can recharge these on our V Australia flight. Other cords are in various suitcases. And, just to give us variety, two of the cameras use AA batteries.

We are looking forward to experiencing V Australia for the first time. Their planes look fantastic--all new with all the mod cons. It should be great. Jade has an added bonus in that one of her squad-mates 'M' is going to be on the same flight. So the girls will have a lot of fun chatting to each other. Oh, another V Australia plus is that it has seat-to-seat chat. That should be interesting.

So farewell Oz for a few weeks. Enjoy your summer while we're in winter.

One step at a time

Getting into the final phase of preparations. I can't believe I forgot my dentist appointment yesterday though! After I dropped Jarrah back at school after his orthodontist appointment I was so focused on doing things at home and also not forgetting I had a school council meeting in the evening that I totally forgot the dentist. Drat!

Yesterday we received a holiday training checklist for Jade to do to keep her gymnastics skills up. It was 3 pages long and includes warm up activities, stretching and strength and dance activities. She definately needs to try to do this as much as she can as last year when she didn't have any holiday exercises her strength and skills regressed and she had to make up for that when she returned to training. Gymnastics is not a sport that you can take a holiday from.

After a bit of a hiccup Jarrah managed to download all of our videos from China off of the memory cards last night. Yes a year has gone by and these haven't been sorted out yet. One of us is going to burn them onto CDs today just in their raw state. I'm hoping that once I get Windows 7, which is supposed to have good, easy to use video software, that we'll finally edit these videos and make them into a proper movie.

Finished and mailed all the Christmas cards this morning. Now I'm just sorting through some papers to see if there are any bills that need to be paid while we're away so I can set these up on bpay. I'm procrastinating about finishing off my suitcase. More cleaning and vacuuming is on the cards today.

Tuesday morning

Another sleep gone and another day dawns. This is the kids' next to the last day of school for the year. Jarrah is already involved in the Headstart program at his secondary school where the kids advance to the next year level for the last 10 days of the year. So Jarrah is doing Year 9 work at the moment. Jade received her end of year report for Grade 3 yesterday (it was outstanding) and this afternoon goes to meet her Grade 4 teacher and classmates. Tomorrow all she has at school is her class Christmas party. She is really looking forward to this as the class hasn't had any parties all year. I think they are also watching movies at school too. The kids are both worn out and ready for a break from school.

I wrote most of the Christmas cards last night. Will finish them off today and mail them off. Whew!

Jarrah has a quick orthodontist appointment this morning to check that his wires aren't getting too long at the back of his mouth. He only got his braces on on the 17th of November and won't have his first adjustment until January sometime. I hope we don't have any orthodontic emergencies on the trip!

Today I'm going to make a quick trip to the shopping centre for a few essential items: USB charger for a Nintendo DS (V Australia provides a USB outlet in economy for charging!), a couple of reading books for Jade and at least one more plug adapter Aus-US for our many electronics items that need charging. Thankfully they all accept 110-240V so the difference in voltage isn't a problem.

Just 3 more sleeps!

Yesterday was a busy day. The four of us went to Jarrah's last baseball game prior to Christmas in the morning. It was a close match which ended in a draw. Later we did a lot of tidying up and packing. I was still bogged down in preliminaries--preparing our US gifts for family we won't see this trip to be mailed from LA by cutting out wrapping paper for each gift and labelling the paper so I can quickly wrap and send everything once we get through customs.

Jade and I both spent a bit of time updating our ipods by adding many albums both new and ones we already have. I've got over 6 GB of music on my ipod now. Should keep me entertained on the trip.

I also printed out our annual newsletter which gets included in our Xmas cards. Just got to write the cards now!

There's still a lot to do.

This morning I bubble-wrapped our more fragile gifts and started putting my clothes in the suitcase. We have an extra suitcase we're bringing which will carry gifts on the way over and stuff we buy, probably including a baseball bat, on the way home. Our personal suitcases aren't big enough to hold either the gifts or the bat so this extra case is a must.

I still have to download videos and photos from our memory cards, check that we have enough adapters for all our electrical items that need charging, make sure we have all the cords for each item, gather up all our paperwork for the flights, get passports out and vacuum the house.

We're off to the US

Welcome to our blog! We are the Vella-Wright family from Melbourne, Australia and this year we are going to the US for our family holiday.

On our trip we'll be staying in two main locations--Connecticut and Florida. In Connecticut we'll be staying with and visiting my Dad and spending Christmas with him. This will be a great opportunity for the kids to get to know their Granddad.

A few days after Christmas we're flying to Florida and staying at Disney World where we'll spend 10 days exploring the Magic Kingdom and other sites of interest in the area.

The past few weeks have been very busy with the end of the school year coming up. We're now in the final few days before our trip. Yesterday we celebrated Christmas--at least in part--so the kids could open their presents before we go. Jarrah got his first digital camera. It's a really nice Nikon in a blue colour. Jade got an ipod Nano in green.

Just three more school days to go and then we're off!