Our World: Hello South Australia

After a teary farewell at the airport with my sister Loren, aunty Sheri and my father, Natalia and I were lucky to have my Mom accompany us to Australia. If you know what toddlers are like, then you will understand why I was not keen to do the trip on my own. Toddlers can be wicked little people, and besides we had too much luggage and I would never have managed it on my own. Since we were immigrating we were allowed 40kg each which equals 2 bags each and I had to bring with Natalia's car seat and pram - so my Mom was much needed!

We left Joburg on the 22 April at 6pm and arrived in Sydney the following afternoon at 2pm - a 12 hour flight. Natalia was dead tired as she didn't have her nap that afternoon so she fell asleep almost immediately on the flight, but she was very restless and unhappy so I gave her meds to assist her to sleep. She didn't even get to eat dinner, shame - but bliss for us :)

Arriving in Sydney we had to get off the plane carrying 6 bags of hand luggage. Natalia walked most of the way which was impressive, but she got tired and I had to carry her a bit. You see, in Australia, you only get your pram from over-sized baggage at the same time you get your bags. We finally got through Immigrations and waited to collect our bags and over-sized luggage. Because we had 2 trolleys each to push with 4 big bags, a car seat and a pram, it was impossible, so my Mom put the car seat on her trolley and I put Natalia straddled on top of the bags on my trolley with the pram folded and balancing behind her (can you picture this?). Our next process was to go through Declarations as we had a lot of medication with us and Easter eggs and chocolates. That was surprisingly quick as well and then we were off to check our bags in for our next flight at the domestic terminal. Natalia was enjoying the trolley ride so much and refused to get off, shame, lol. By this time Mom was so pooped and no more strength in her - she's not used to lugging heavy around, walking forever and carrying heavy Natalia around. We waited only a couple of minutes when the bus arrived to transfer us to the domestic terminal and once there we had to walk again, to the end of the building of course, carrying all this heavy stuff and princess around. Poor Granny was tired.

Finally we left Sydney at 4.30pm and arrived in Adelaide at 6pm - a 2 hour flight (yes there is a time difference). Only then did I start telling Natalia that she would see her Daddy soon. It had been 4 weeks since she'd last seen Kim and I didn't want to confuse her. Little people don't understand time, and when Kim left SA she wasn't dealing with all these changes very well and she was couldn't understand why her Daddy wasn't around anymore. She had another nap on this flight with Granny and then I explained to her that she was going to see her Daddy any minute, trying to get her excited. It worked, she was so happy to see Daddy.

It was a long trip and we were finally where we were meant to be - together as a family again.