living in the city

The apartment we are staying in is about the size of our former bedroom. But the babies are happy because get to watch the buses pass and mom takes them to the park everyday.

luggage

While I normally like to travel light, moving to New Zealand like turtles, with nothing more than our homes on our backs, made for some serious planning.

We flew from Salt Lake to Long Beach, then spent a day with Aimee, Andrew and their families.
Neither Jet Blue nor Air New Zealand offered sky cab service. So we had to lug everything all the way inside the airport. We made quite a spectacle.

Getting through security much longer, but once people saw us in line they usually would aviod lining up behind us.

Due to the fact that Lonnie's company was paying for the tickets we decided to get seats for both the twins. Even though technically they can still fly as lap children we didn't think that 13 hours with a baby on each of our laps would be a very wise choice. We also decided to bring the babies' car seat on the plane. I'm so glad we did this, it kept them in a familiar and comfortable seat and also really helped them to sleep. Thankfully both flights also had individual screens which allowed the babies to remain entertained. The Air New Zealand flight was especially nice. There was a wide selection of movies for kids and Max and Maya watched Jungle Book, Cars and Winnie the Pooh. The flight staff was very accommodating and kind. With a dark red-eye flight and their car seats the babies slept the majority of the 13 hours in the air. If it weren't for the screaming child in from of us and the woman behind us who kept accidentally turning on her over head light we would have all gotten a full night's sleep.

Here we are after arriving at the Long Beach airport.



One of the best travel helps was the Traveling Toddler strap (Thank you, Ann) that allowed us to attach the car seats, along with the babies, onto our roller bags. I would highly recommend these to anyone traveling with a toddler and a car seat.

one day in la

simplfy

In the past few months we have gone from living here (packed up to this)....then we spent a week or so living out of this.
We were lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks in my parent's lovely home waiting during the holidays and then waiting for our visas.

We filled up a corner of their storage closet with what was left of our things.

and took with us 8 suitcases, 4 carry-ons, 4 personal items, 2 car seats and a stroller.

adios

Our visas came though and we are leaving Salt Lake tomorrow. We will spend one day in LA visiting family and then Thursday evening we fly out to Auckland. I'm excited and nervous and unfortunately also sick.

cousin stella

Max loves to chase Stella around the house. Stella isn't quite sure how she feels about the attention or the fact that she isn't the littlest one around the house.
Cousin Stella likes to dance with her mom. She likes to wear dress-up clothes and footy pajamas. She likes to turn on the keyboard to play "How Deep is Your Love" while she jumps on her brothers bed.

friends

four generations of mercer men

hogel zoo

We decided to take advantage of having a couple extra days in Salt Lake by going to the zoo.

Due to the cold there was almost no one there. We really enjoyed our short trip. The kids were able to run around with out our having to worry about loosing them.


The animals even payed special attention to us, this orangutan gave us a nice face-to-face gaze.

Don't forget to recycle your Christmas tree next year.

winter wonderland