The trip to Australia

The trip went amazingly well. We left the house at 3pm sharp, when an airport taxi (minivan) picked us up. We packed as lightly as possible but still had one large, one medium and one small bag, three back packs, two car seats, one car seat base, one booster seat, one violin one stroller frame (for the infant seat that Astrid still uses) and one grocery-size cloth bag full of food. We carried all three backpacks, the food, the infant seat and the stroller with us onto the plane,so we were pretty loaded down. We gate checked to stroller and the carseat.

Our first crisis came when our big bag was 5# over weight (we don't own a scale so had no way to check this). The easiest way to lighten the bag was to take out the toiletries, but then they couldn't be carried on because they contained large liquids (and we didn't want to cart 5# extra around anyway). I cannibalized the zippered, insulated bag that I was so proud of having used to create a refrigerator section in our food bag and we checked that as a teeny fourth bag (fortunately we had lots of wiggle room in our number of checked items - United allowed two free checked items for each ticketed international traveler).

Astrid was cranky and restless during the Mpls to San Fran trip but the bigs were fine. We felt like it was past midnight when the flight for Sydney departed. All three kids went to sleep relatively quickly and slept for five or six hours pretty solidly.

Continued soon.