In the USA

Greetings!

Long time since we have written anything. We are having a grand time in the States and don't have much time to write. So here is a little catch up on what is going on.

We left Melbourne on June 12th and sat in a plane for around 15 hours. It should have only been 14 but the luggage conveyor belt thing broke and so it took an extra hour to get the late people's luggage loaded. By the time the plane got in the air Jolene was getting tired of sitting :-\ Thankfully the Lord provided a little friend for Jolene, her name was Sarah and she was four. They played pretty well together and it relieved us of having to play with Jolene the whole time. Adele was not so good on the plane. She had a fever the whole time due to an approaching ear infection. We kept giving her Panadol but she was pretty miserable (we were able to get anitbiotics for her in Hobart). All in all the girls probably slept for around eights hours from our door in Geelong to Chicago (28 hours total). We had a eight hour layover in LA. Thankfully our good friends Brandon and Lisa Rigg picked us up and took us to their apartment where we crashed. We were able to take baths and showers and then sleep and last but not least ate! They even got In & Out Burger....yum!!!!!!!!!!!! After the short stint at the Rigg's home we hopped on another plane and headed to Chicago where our parents took us to my grandparents home in Hobart.

Let me say that I have never been so tired in my entire life. I have stayed up till 4am at college, I have stayed up all night, but this was miserable. Dried out from the high altitude, dirty from traveling for close to 30 hours, and just tired.tired.tired. Thankfully all our luggage arrived safely and well we are here!


Oh so I forgot one tiny detail. Before we got on the plane in Melbourne we had to go through customs. Welllllllll, there was a minor problem with our customs lady. She told that Adele did not have the correct papers. We probably looked like deer in headlights...what! She said that in order for us to get back into Australia Adele had to have an Australian passport. At this point both of the girls were getting restless and crying, I was starting to feel a bit tense. You see I had called a while ago and checked on that very thing and the Oz people said that she would be fine with only her US passport, well apparently not. Ahh yes, one more thing. The rest of us villains (as she was treating us) did not have visa stickers in our new passports (new from the fire). We "calmly" told her that the US consult said that they were transferred electronically and that we would not receive new stickers. Strike two! One more and this lady was going to throw us out on the side of the road. Thankfully she didn't care we were leaving, she would have cared if we were on our way back in. God is good!

So this is what has to happen. We, meaning B, Jolene, and I have to get visa stickers in our new passports. This requires us to mail them to Washington DC (we just got them back!). Then Brandon has to drive up to Chicago and setup an interview with the Australian Embassy to apply for a passport for Adele. Blah, more driving. B is actually going up the Chi-town tomorrow. We have been praying about this a lot and God has been good. Everything has worked out about as well as it could and we are on track. So Lord willing we will be getting Adele's Oz passport in about a week. She will no longer be illegal. So that is the mini adventure within the larger one.

As of now we are in Kokomo, but have already been in Hobart and Fairland. I will have to catch you up on all that in a few days. Oh and pics too, we have lots of pics already:-}

Until then.....