We are sitting in the LA airport waiting for our flight home to Toronto.

We left many hours ago from Cairns, Australia and flew to Brisbane to await our flight to LA.

In Brisbane, we got a special treat! Aunt CJ (Rob’s sister) came to meet us for a quick visit. It was so great to see her in Australia – which she has called home for a couple of years (but will be heading back to Canada shortly).

We boarded for our 13 hour flight finally. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated it would be. Qantas fed us lots of food, there were a ton of movies, and everyone slept quite a bit. However, everyone is still a bit tired.

But as we wait our last flight (our 9th flight of this trip), I’m thinking about some of our best moments.

There were so many:

Swimming in Fiji, walking the beach, various sunsets throughout the trip, Auckland Sky Tower, Devonport, Glowworm caves, Geysers, Sheep Show, Falls, Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge, Kuranda, Great Barrier Reef…. everything was spectacular. Truly a trip that lived up to all our expectations.

But, when I think of the moments that I think I will treasure the most – they are the little things:

Watching everyone parade through the airports, sitting on floors doing homework, opening up hotel room doors to see what cool room we would be in, fighting over who would sleep where, driving around in the the red van listening to some tunes and admiring the landscape, picniking for meals, playing in the parks, laughing at jokes and replaying funny events, falling asleep with exhaustion, finding plugs to plug in all the electronics, searching through endless gift shops, sitting on boats and ferries, going through endless lines of customs and security, talking about favourite moments and future dream trips, listening to the kids laugh as they watched endless episodes of  “The Big Bang Theory” (and having Josh give me the play by play of each scene), enjoying the sunsets – knowing it was rising at home (and knowing that we will always think of it doing the opposite of what we see at home), saying good night at weird hours and in different rooms…. There was something so amazing about being on the opposite side of the world – together.

It was all the little things that can’t be captured by photo or video that really made this trip. The time together. It was so worth it. I’m so glad that I documented it all (and the kids did too!), have thousands of pictures (and I truly mean thousands)…but the memories I will cherish the most are the ones written on my heart forever.

For all the frustrating moments (yelling at kids:), packing and unpacking (living out of suitcases with 5 kids is HARD), feeling frequently tired (and hot and hungry), dealing with whiny and fighting kids… I love my family. I love travelling with them. I will always cherish this adventure:)