The kookaburras have landed

There is a big difference travelling with a group of people who are all over 2 years old. I haven't flown without an under-2 since 2002. It helped that Virgin Australia is an awesome airline and the flight had lots of empty seats. We managed to get 9 seats between the 5 of us thanks to the flight attendants who let us move around before the flight took off (and kicking a dude out of what should have been an empty row). We put Nate in a row of 3 to himself so that he could stretch out, and it was good that we did because when he projectile vomited, it only got all over himself and not on any neighbors. Other than that, it was an excellent flight.

So now we're working on adjusting to the big ole time difference. The kids are getting there - they woke up at 8:30ish this morning. Eli slept from 10:30pm to 11am - I'm loving the 12+ hours of sleep at night and no nap during the day, but not so much the waking up at 11am, because then I wake up at 11am too. I'm going to aim for 9pm tonight and see where that gets us. Nick was awake from 1:30am to about 11am and then slept until 2:30pm, so we'll see what his night looks like!

We went to the amazing Beaverton Library today. I bloody love that library. There is just SO MUCH THERE. So many books, so many books on CD, so many DVDs (we'll avoid those though for now after a few months of using TV as a quiet-keeper), so many toys for toddlers, so much space. Any topic you can think of and there are so many books. I asked the Children's Librarian about resources for homeschoolers and she showed me to the "Parent/Teacher" section which has all of the curriculums, workbooks, 'where your 2nd grader should be' books, etc. She also showed me where to find all of the homeschooling resource links on their library website. Cool. I picked up a list of all of the free activities the library puts on over the summer which includes a chess club for Nate (yay!) and lots of stuff for older kids.

Nick and I went to the local supermarket and were incredibly impressed by the food here (I knew - I have been here quite a few times since he was last here in 2007). We spent over an hour there looking at all of the incredible products available. If you're interested in organic wholefoods, this is a pretty incredible place to live. Tomorrow I will drag myself out of bed to get to the farmers market with my mom. Yes, it's going to be raining. This is the Portland metropolitan area, after all.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention our car situation. We looked extensively at 7-seaters and decided to get a Toyota Sienna (our first ever minivan - Nate saw it and said, "That's not very mini," which was an astute observation). So we looked online at a few and decided to haul ourselves into a few used car dealerships. Awesome fun. Before we made it that far though, a woman at my mom's work told her that her parents are selling their minivan to buy a new one, and since we've just moved here, might we be interested? So we're picking up our new (to us) Toyota Sienna from her tomorrow. Gotta love it.