To Perth!

Getting up was not an issue this morning.... Z stumbled into our room about 3:45am muttering something about his stomach growling so loud it was waking Christa up.... I got him asleep in a couple minutes with a backrub. The three of us snoozed a little longer but both Sara and I found ourselves ready to get up by 4:30am or so. Sara put her trips into the computer (which allows other flight attendants to pick them up through an eBay like online system).

We got to the airport on time, with time to grab an Aussie grilled breakfast at a restaurant in the terminal. When we asked for it "to go", they looked at us a bit funny. "Do you mean you want it take-away?" Uh, yep! That's what we meant!

We took it away up to the Qantas Club (thankfully American has reciprocity with Qantas' Club). And this was no average club! Wow! They had real food being served for breakfast. We slammed our restaurant breakfast then headed for the club's buffet line. Yogurt with some yummy & sweet jelly-like stuff. Excellent! Raisin bread that got a thumbs up from mommy. A coffee machine that cranked out phenomenal lattes.

Andy quote: "Hmm... what's this stuff... Vegemite.... I seem to recall a former Australian colleague talking about this stuff. Let's try it!"

Everyone took a bite of some vegemite spread thinly over toast. All I can say is that will likely be our last bite ever. Is this a joke? Do people really like this stuff? If you can conjure up what heavily salted mud would taste like, you've pretty much pinned vegemite. Our official food critics gave it a rousing three thumbs down!

Perhaps we were so comfortably stuffing our faces with the non-vegemite options in the club since we found out early that we again had seats on the plane. Incredible! The flight was supposed to be full but a bunch were now open. Thank you, Lord!

For those keeping score at home, we actually ate a third breakfast on the plane! This was apparently not a day to go hungry! The five and a half hours to Perth seemed like a puddle-jump compared to yesterday. A limo ride to the Parmelia Hilton and (whew!), we're finally here!

An hour and a half nap turned into nearly three as I'm still trying to figure out how my new Treo's alarm clock feature works. Three children were not happy about being woken up.

Eventually their minds re-entered their worn out bodies and we hit the streets. We figured out how to navigate the train to Fremantle (Yep! Home of the Dockers!). We dined at a fish and chips place called Kaili's, highly recommended by some locals. We're quite sure that everything we ate had been swimming earlier in the day--very fresh! Just looking at the fish in the case was impressive as Z-Man illustrates!

We stopped for some gotta-call-your-mama-it's-so-good gelato on the way back to the train station. The strawberry gelato tasted like a big, sweet strawberry. The coconut taste like cocount. The snozzberry tasted like... Oops, I digress.

On the train ride home we talked with two transit guards. They must have been lonely because I'm pretty sure they'd still be talking to us if we had invited them in! Interesting quotes:

• "Perth is the most remote city in the world."
• "It's pretty difficult to go to jail in Western Australia." I gave him a U.S. scenario where if you get caught driving under the influence, you get your license snatched and you do some time. "Really? Here we wait until about the fifth time you do it, then you might serve some time! You may not even go to jail if you run over someone, unless of course you back up a couple times to keep running over him."
• "Western Australia is about 10 years behind the rest of the Western world. We're just now starting to get bling-bling." The other guard looked at him funny and said, "What's that?"

Everyone was pretty toasty by the time we got home but it was still difficult getting everyone settled enough to turn the lights out. We have two adjoining rooms and kind of giggled as we listened to the kids banter. Christa did a play-by-play of the sounds Zachary was making as a result of some nasal draining. Barrett just wanted to read. Z was pretty sure he has broken his knee while trying some jumping manuever.

Before the day was over, Z gave the quote of the day: "Dad, this is going to be the best experience of my life." It was clear to him and the rest of us that we weren't in Kansas anymore, so to speak. We're looking forward to tomorrow!