The long awaited adventure begins!

At last!  After a frantic period of packing, cleaning, organising and running around like headless chooks - we are finally on the road!  No more work for ages.  YAY.  A fantastic 10 day trip to the South Island acted as a pre-holiday 'wind-down'...with heaps of mountain biking and hanging out with good mates.  The hot pools in Hanmer Springs were pretty fab too.  The South Island is just a gorgeous place isn't it?
However, a plane trip beckoned...and the first stop was sunny Sydney.  Hanging out with ma and pa Buttle in S'nives.  A week of cruising and sleeping and hanging out with the 'olds'.  All good.  Mum even through a party with an American theme.  Dolly Parton even turned up with balloons for her boobs!  (Mum always did like fancy dress)  Also visited the Marintime Museum on Darling Harbour and walked through a submarine...Brent was in engineering heaven - see pic.  After a slight hiccup with our visas (long story but basically were not allowed to get on plane on 1st trip to airport- didn't have correct visa for the length of time we wanted to stay in States - unfortunate bad advice from travel agent! Not cool but will be sorted,)....we finally got on our flight to San Francisco!!  America....here we come!!!!