We're back...

We left Seattle Thursday- still no renters in the house, but at least it's ready to go and we have a great neighbor looking after everything. We spent 5 hours in LAX- such a boring airport- and then boarded our flight for Melbourne. Surprise! We had a stopover in Auckland- we've now been to the Auckland 4 times and have yet to spend any time there. Surprise again! Qantas weighs carry on luggage and anything over 15 pounds has to be checked in. Even if you've never traveled with Mark, just knowing him you can probably figure out that he travels with a small electronic store in his backpack. His carry on weighed in at a whopping 25 pounds and was obviously not packed well enough to be checked in. Fortunately each passenger is allowed 2 carry on bags and they had extra bags for those with 1 heavy carry on to split it into 2 lighter ones. The flight was long- but we knew that- and bumpy. Every time I fell asleep, the turbulence woke me up. To top it off, the in flight entertainment wasn't working and the food really sucked. When we landed in Auckland they told us that we had to get off of the plane but that we could leave our carry on luggage on the plane. We got off of the plane and then realized that we had no idea when or where we were supposed to get back on it- they're pretty relaxed when it comes to traveling around here. Fortunately we're smart enough to figure it out and we made it back on the plane and back to Melbourne. Stuey met us at the airport and took us back to our apartment in the sweltering heat. Lucky for us we had missed the 3 days of record breaking heat- except that all of the stores sold out of fans during those days (thank god Tim and Carol had an extra). Needless to say we've spent a lot of time in the last few days walking around the apartment in our underwear :) I suppose I'll sign off now and leave you with that lovely image- cheers!