The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of awesomeness....or was it the lack of sleep that made it "whirl"?
Either way, it WAS awesome.
My Grandma, Dakota and I have been planning to visit Jael in Australia for a long long time. Somewhere along the way we decided that it would be fun if we could surprise her, so we emailed her wonderful hubby to see if he would help plan the surprise. (1)He thought it was a great idea, and the plans commenced!
The next step was money. It's not cheap to fly to Australia, so we had to figure out how to do it. (2)Dakota really kept me motivated to save my pennies. At the young age of 20, my sister is an expert saver, and would consistently email me chunks of her pay check to add to our "Australia fund". Slowly our money grew, and in January, we began planning final details, like (3)getting Danica's passport, (4)finding a deal on flights, and (5)confirming that the older girls could go to Grandma and Grandpa Steckly's for spring break. That was another awesome thing...(6)Spring Break fell at the perfect time for us to take the trip, yay!
The day came where we had almost all of the money to go, and we HAD to book the tickets to keep the good price. The website where I had found the price in the first place turned out to be more annoying than I could have ever imagined. For about 3 hours, I thought it might not work out, since none of the flights seemed to be available. On a whim, I clicked over to another site...fully expecting to pay more, and lo and behold, (7)the SAME flights were available for the SAME price they had been on the other site...and this time the booking worked!
(8)It was official. We were taking the trip of a lifetime...to Australia...to see our sister that we hadn't seen in over a year, and to meet her son that we had never met!
March 8th came, and we (9)travelled safely to Carstairs to drop the girls off at the inlaw's house. On the 9th, we boarded the airplane...which includes a few more things I was thankful for: (10) We were first in line for check in, (11)The clerk was very helpful at getting us good seats, and providing a wheelchair so that my grandma didn't have to walk through the airport, (12)Because of the wheelchair, we moved through customs and security super fast, and (13), we had time to enjoy a Starbucks before boarding :)
Fast forward to the 18 hour airplane ride. On the flight I was thankful for (14)a baby that slept for 9 of the 18 hours, (15)they played good movies, and (16) that I brought Gerber toddler meals for Danica. She ate 2 on the way there, PLUS polished off a good portion of my dinner! I am also VERY thankful that
(17)the airplane stayed in the air and we had a very smooth flight :)
Upon arriving in Sydney, we met Nathan at the airport and found out that (18) we had successfully managed to keep it a surprise and Jael had NO idea we were coming! From that point on we were "pee your pants" excited to get to her!!!
She just happened to be out for lunch with friends that day, so we decided to surprise her at the cafe they were at. (19)It was amazing. She saw us out the window and looked at us funny for a few seconds before she realized that it was actually us...then she ran to us and didn't even say anything for a few minutes, we just held each other and cried! (20) That reaction alone was worth every penny and hour spent making it happen :)
I'll write Part 2 tomorrow...right now it is WAY past my bedtime. Goodnight!
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