Mum & Dad head back to Australia...

Saturday July 14, 2019. Osceola, Iowa (~50 miles south of Des Moines, Iowa) is the home of a beautiful little Amtrak Train Station where we put my parents (aka Australia Grandma and Grandpa) on the California Zephyr train, bound for San Francisco and then Los Angeles over the next 5 days.

It has been a bit over two months on the road for Mum and Dad. Ten days in England for the wonderful wedding of Mary, my sister, and almost two months with us in the USA. Mum has always been a traveler so she is always up for an adventure. Dad is a different story. Dad traveled when he played lacrosse for Australia in the 1960s, winning a silver medal in the World Championships. But in his adult working life he has been very reluctant to travel, instead preferring the routines of hometown country town life.

It was an ideal and not so ideal time for my parents to come for two months. The amount of change we have gone through has been intense. For instance, in the eight weeks with us they lived with us in 3 different houses and 5 hotels. Our Beacon Hill, Seattle home for 2 weeks, then the AirBnB in Renton (just outside of Seattle), 5 hotels on the drive from Seattle to Iowa, and a rental apartment here in Des Moines, Iowa. Wow!

They were helpful in being an extra two adults to oversee the kids but with Whitney, me or our nanny around that impact was limited a bit. They were always up for helping but the amount of change we were going through meant we didn’t really have a routine for them to fit into so that further impacted the opportunity to utilize them. Nonetheless it added some more adventure to the last couple of months and I am massively grateful for the time they spend with us each year. It is a long trip from Naracoorte, South Australia and it is awesome that they have done it every year, sometimes twice a year, and stay for 2-3 months at a time. It is truly wonderful and has a great impact on our daughters.

And to our wonderful friends who warmly include my parents in all our catch ups, play dates, and farewells, thank you!!!

Safe travels Mum and Dad. Love you!