Halloween! In America!!!

November 15, 2015

Yesterday here in Perth it was 40.7 degrees Celcius here. That's 106 degrees for all the USA peeps. ONE HUNDRED AND SIX FREAKING DEGREES!!!! I feel like I shouldn't need to say it, but I'll say it anyway. It's NOVEMBER. November should be lovely mid to high 20's (mid 80's at the highest). We don't have air conditioning in this house. Rather surprisingly to those who don't live here (and rather ridiculously for those who do), air conditioning is not standard is houses here. So once the house heats up, as it has from the last few days of insane temperatures, it stays hot and oh-my-gosh has it been uncomfortable. I'll say it again, IT'S NOVEMBER for crying out loud, and this is January/February weather!!! It's going to be a long hot summer.

So to escape (kind of), I'll reminisce a little here today about the cold (really cold comparative to this!) that we just experienced over Halloween in the USA.

The trip over was actually not too bad, considering the 35-ish hours travel time and a two year old. She slept a little on the first flight from Perth to Brisbane and then was pretty good for most of the flight from Brisbane to LA. She slept for around 5 hours of the 14 hour trip - she did get pretty cranky around an hour before landing, and we got a couple of evil looks from the people sat a couple of rows ahead. But seriously, she's two, and she'd been great the whole time, and all up was only cranky for around half hour at the very most. After 13 hours on a plane, I challenge anyone to not be cranky. So it's probably lucky that we only got a few looks, and not a comment because I may have had a few choice words to say otherwise......

For those who may or may not consider a trip across the Pacific Ocean at some point, I highly recommend Virgin Australia. Every time I/we have been to the USA, we've flown them (bar once, when I went with Delta, who would be my 'only-fly-with-them-if-it's-superdooper-ridiculously-cheap-as-they-suck-big-time' recommedation). With Virgin Australia, their standard economy seats are wide, and have a good recline. You have in flight entertainment consisting of movies, tv, games and music, and you can also seat-to-seat chat via that system. They feed you relatively decent food - you get two hot meals (dinner and breakfast), plus a hot snack like a burrito or quiche, plus a bottle of water, a blanket and pillow, along with earplugs and an eyemask and a pen for customs forms. They also have a snack bar operating on a serve yourself basis. You can go up and grab a bag of chips or a can of soda, or refill your water bottle as many times as you want. And on the flight home, they offered a hot snack service a couple of hours before breakfast as well, where you just go to the back of the plane, and they'll get you a hot or cold drink or snack.

Also for those who may need a little help in the relaxation department, they give you free alcohol on the flight too......

While these may not be overly important details on a domestic flight, on long haul 13 - 15 hour flights, it's stuff like this that makes it that little bit more bearable!

The flight from LA to MN was on the smallest plane I have ever been on in my entire life. It only held like 50 people or so I think - we were row 24 or 25 and that was the very back row. Each side only had two tiny seats, and the aisle was super skinny. It also kind of sucked for tall people as their heads would have been touching the ceiling above their seats.... good thing I'm short as that didn't affect me at all!
**okay, I'm adding in here that my math is terrible (I blame jetlag induced brain-fog. Sounds legit right?) Anyway, the plane held about 100 people - oops. Oh well! :)**

The boy and I kind of dozed on and off during that flight, while Miss Penelope and the Awesome One stayed awake. I woke up not too long before landing and I was ridiculously excited to see blue skies and colour on the trees as we came in to land, and then even more so on the drive to the house!

The blue skies didn't last and the rain set in for a few days, but even in the rain, this place is beautiful!

We thought we had a decent amount of down-time this trip, but as always ended up being relatively busy. Next time I think it needs to be a week longer to fit it all in!

We caught up with friends and family and did some shopping (of course)! We spent a day at a pumpkin patch, playing in the hay and corn mazes. The kids' did some pumpkin slinging and we all had a ball in the corn pit!! We tried deep fried Oreos (which are freakin' delicious I might add!), and we picked some pumpkins! 3 for $10 - I couldn't believe the price!! Here they are on average around $4 to $5 a kilo which equates to around $2 to $2.50 per pound. A not overly big pumpkin is like $15 - $20 or so I guess here, so to be able to buy them around $3 or $4 each was very exciting to me!

So after the day of pumpkins, we went to dinner at a friends' house where the kids got to have fun playing in a leaf pile. This was, believe it or not, on the boys' wish list of things to do!

So with all these photos, we are only a few days into the trip. I will leave you with a couple of shots of the ridiculously gorgeous streetscapes and tree foliage, and will return in a couple of days to post more from our trip! We still have pumpkin carving, Halloween stores, Mall of America's Underwater World, Halloween party and trick or treating (so much fun!!), along with hanging with family and a day trip to Minnehaha Falls (which was on my wanted to do list, yay!).