Tuesday, August 29, 2017: Long Valley, NJ

Hello!

I haven't actually blogged online for a number of years now... thought I'd give it another go since this particular vacation is significant.

We are 8 days and a wake-up from 'officially' beginning our adventure to Australia.  We've been blessed to have all kinds of help setting up the logistics of our trip:  Conor's help booking all of our flights while applying my accumulated United Airlines points to the over-water legs of the journey (3 legs); Ross and Avril providing local insight, color, suggestions, helping us with lodging and just going out of their way making sure we're not alone when we show up at the airport in Sydney on Saturday, 9/9.  Looking forward to spending some quality time with them upon arrival!

Rosie and I have been fussing over this trip for so long now, it almost feels like the trip is over and we haven't yet begun!!  Crazy, right?  :-)

We've addressed most things one would expect needed to be accounted for prior to leaving home for an extended period of time:
- Airline flights
- Passports and Visas
- Foreign currency
- Alerting the impacted Credit Card companies
- Getting International calling plans on our iPhones
- Lining up friends/family to take a look in a few times while we're away
- Tying up loose ends at work
- Making reservations here and there in Australia based on some things we want to see/do
- Still a few things to do....
   - packing suitcases
   - deciding on carry-on
   - transportation to Newark International
   - making sure our bees are as set as possible while we're gone
   - having post office hold mail
   - out-of-office alerts

Enough for now.