Australia

Our flight on Friday morning was a breeze compared to our other flight, and we made it to Adelaide at 10:45 in the morning. It was a wonderful surprise to clear customs and find Grandma and Grandpa waiting for us. They had tricked us into thinking that someone from the office would be picking us up and we totally fell for it.

Adelaide is a beautiful city, and the weather is perfect right now. The mission home is great, and we feel right at home. Having spent the couple of days in New Zealand helped with the jet lag, so we're all sleeping through the night, but getting up close to 6 a.m. Normal is 7 a.m., so hopefully we'll get to that soon.

All I can say is how happy we are to be here. I love seeing Mason making cookies with Delsa, and listening to Ryan's conversations with Bob. It's hard to believe it has been a year and a half since we saw them. Andrew has warmed right up to them, which is great since we're leaving him with them in two days. We have just over three weeks here (we leave on a Sunday), and I'm sure they'll fly by.

I still have to catch up on our New Zealand adventures. Ryan and I are both really glad we made the stop, and we squeezed in as much as we could with three kids. I'll post something on that later on today or tomorrow.

We leave on Monday morning for the Great Barrier Reef (that will be until Wednesday night), and then we'll go down to a beach house for a couple of nights with everyone. So it's going to be busy, but fun.

We're going to a ward Christmas party barbecue in an hour. I'm glad about that, since two of my "musts" for Australia are having someone say "g'day mate" to me and having someone throw something on the "barbie" to me while I'm here. This will take care of at least one of those.