Our first 5 days in Australia!

Hi family and friends,

We are in Australia. It's amazing to us and hard to believe we are really here!!! I realized that I had plans to share my photos with those of you back home, but didn't have a plan to keep a journal. Several of you asked if I had a blog, I thought it was a good idea so here goes! I am hopeful that I will be able to keep up with this during the next four months!

Technology is quite wonderful. It's taken me a little while to figure out how to get my pictures to picasa. My Creative Memories software works best on PC, but Erik's laptop is a Mac, so we added parallel and made it a PC too. So getting the two to cooperate is hard for me to figure out. But I just added photos to my facebook and picasa web album. Check it out at http://picasaweb.google.com/carlanilsen

Our flight from Portland to SF, CA was uneventful. Getting our bags checked in and all was very calm. It was great. Thanks Linda and Edgar for taking us to the airport. Then when we got to SF they called Bryn and Ryan's names over the speaker. They told us that their visas weren't in the system. We panicked a little. They called Australia and found out that it said that they were only traveling with one parent and they didn't have record of consent from the other. We were never notified about this. After they talked with Australia, they were able to fix the problem. Whew.

We left SF at 11:30 p.m., we waited an hour on the ground for people coming late from Seattle. We had several extra seats next to us, which was wonderful for the 6 of us. Andrew and Kari and Erik took a Unisom and a Melatonin and slept lots. Andrew for over 12 of the 14 hours. I couldn't believe it and to be honest I was a little envious. Kari slept for 11 hours and Erik slept lots too. Bryn only slept about 5 hours and Ryan and I slept a little more than that. The trip wasn't as grueling as I thought. We are a day ahead here, 19 hours ahead of Portland. Since it's only 5 hours different, it isn't too bad as far as jet lag goes.

Jeff and Faye Robinson met us at the airport. Jeff went to Graceland with Erik's parents, Marge and Tore, and they have remained great friends over the years. Jeff and Faye are so generous to host us. It's not easy to have 6 people pile into your home. They have a great home, with beds for all of us, a salt water pool, wireless internet and a park right behind the house. They have been cooking amazing food. For New Year's day yesterday, we had prawns and oysters, and Pavlova for dessert.

We've played in the ocean 3 times, gone to a movie-Bedtime Stories, driven thru the Royal National Park and had a picnic, and gone to the fireworks at the Sydney Harbour. The trek to see the fireworks was "epic" as the kids say. Kari and Andrew headed down to meet up with some Graceland friends for the event. They went at 8 a.m. and got home at 7 a.m. They went on the train and bus and slept a few hours in the park where they were to let the train traffic die down and they walked about 6 miles home. We didn't have quite as long a day, we left at 3:30 p.m. and got home at 2 a.m. We waited on the sidewalk for about 7 hours to see the show. It was quite awesome. There were fireworks off the Harbour Bridge, by the Opera house and off 6 barges in the river and off of skyscrapers behind us.

We are loving being here and are learning some new phrases, etc. Love you all,

Carla J