First I opened a copy of the movie Up, which was a little confusing, as we already had the movie, but he said it was just a clue. Then he gave me a stuffed Kangaroo. I asked if we were going to Australia, and he said yes! That brought on the flood works of tears as this was a bucket list item for us. We had hoped to do this in the future, but figured it was many years down the road in retirement.
Nate said that the trip dates weren’t planned, but that he would let me research what I wanted to do and plan it.
It took many months to figure out all the nitty gritty details. We knew we didn't want to go during our summer, which is winter there. We settled on Fall Break from school which would be going into spring in Australia.
One of my biggest concerns was one of the kids getting sick and having to cancel the trip. You might think this wasn’t something I should worry about too much, however the last three times we flew up to WA we had to cancel or change our plans due to sick kids. Twice after we had already checked into our flight, because of a kid throwing up just hours before heading to the airport, so I kind of have PTSD from kids getting sick while traveling.
To help with the stress and due to the much higher cost of the trip we decided to purchase a trip insurance plan. This plan was more than just the ability to cancel the trip though, it also covers things like lost luggage, if you need to be medevacked due to injury on your trip, or hospital stays. So this gave me more peace of mind.
When our kids started school at the end of July, we expected at least our daughter to get sick pretty quickly, as that seemed to be the way it had gone the last couple years, but we were happy and surprised to make it a whole month before getting sick. Of course the first bug to come home was Covid, which thankfully wasn’t as bad as previous times. Since we all eventually caught it we figured it was a blessing in disguise as it should give us immunity for our upcoming trip.
When we were a few weeks out and after recovering from Covid we went and got our flu shots. Last Christmas we had to cancel our flight up to WA as we all had the flu and that was miserable, so we didn’t want to risk ruining our trip with the flu either.
As our trip drew closer there was an opportunity for our kids to go to an event at our church called gKon, basically a fun night of worship and games. Since I wanted the kids to stay up late before we traveled to help us get closer to Australia time, we figured it was a good way to do that. The event would end at 9 PM and was at our church's main campus across the valley.
Friday morning after we got the kids off to school we started getting some rain as well as warnings from the National Weather Service about Severe Thunderstorms warnings and Flash Floods. Living in Phoenix we don’t get rain too often, so it’s usually a welcome thing and very necessary. The last several years our monsoon season has had below average rainfall, and this year we have been below average, and the monsoon season was almost over. About 20 minutes after getting home with the kids we had a nice bout of rain that dropped over 0.25” of rain in a short period of time. As Nate headed to take the kids to gKon in Mesa, I got messages from the National Weather Service to stay off roads unless you're fleeing the area. Some areas were expecting 60 mph winds and potential quarter size hail with damage expected to cars and homes. Nate did hit a pretty big squall of rain, but thankfully made it safely to drop off the kids. On his way home he saw a few exits that were closed due to flooding.
There was a ground stop at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix because of the severe thunderstorm that lasted several hours, causing a massive backlog of flights that had to be delayed or cancelled. This meant our flight the next day, and probably every flight leaving the airport was going to be full for the next few day as they tried to get everyone to their destinations. I even got a text from our airline saying if we wanted to reschedule, we could travel anytime in the next two weeks with no penalties, or we could cancel for a full refund, even if the ticket wasn't refundable.
The Waymo service of self driving cars that operates in the Chandler/Tempe area also had to suspend service, as they had several cars drive into flooded roads. We had taken a Waymo just for fun about a week ago, but I'm glad we aren't trying one out today!
After I finished packing, Nate and I took the rare opportunity of not having kids to go on a dinner date. The storm had passed by that time, and we went and tried a place recommended to us over in Mesa called Thai Corner Kitchen. Nate said he would rate his meal as a 9 out of 10, even better than some food he had in Thailand!
Nate's favorite Thai dish: Pad Kee Mao or Drunken Noodle
Friday evening getting the kids ready for bed I can tell that Kailey is definitely catching a cold, thankfully she doesn’t have a fever. Hoping and praying this wont cause any major issue with the trip.
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