Doubt

In the days leading up to the flight out here, I had a few moments of panic, but never any doubt that this is an adventure we wanted to have.  Yesterday, I had my first "doubt attack."
We drove from Sydney to Nelson Bay yesterday morning.  Nelson Bay is a little northeast of Newcastle and is where we will be staying for the next few weeks while we set up shop.  We have a nice 3 bedroom apartment that is fully furnished and has a bed for every head.  Our apartment also has two balconies.  We had two lorikeets on our railing yesterday morning and I can hear a lot of them outside this morning.  We spent the afternoon sorta just driving around having a look.  It rained almost all day yesterday and so there wasn't much time out of the car. 
We turned onto a small dirt road in order to drive back to a beach and see the ocean views.  I managed to spot this fellow sitting on a branch next to the road. 

Of course, once we saw this kookaburra, we saw lots of them.  We also had two kangaroos bound out in the road in front of us.  There were two kangaroos bound across the road in front of our car yesterday as well.  Really fast, but completely awesome to see. 

We ate out for lunch, but decided to cook dinner in our room.  This required a trip to the grocery store.  The store we chose was very close to our apartment, but also sorta small.  This is the first time I've ever bought anything in Australia and there was a lot of sticker shock.  Milk costs about $5 a gallon.  This is not organic or anything special.  Just regular 2% milk.  This store did not have any skim milk either.  Most everything else is just a little more expensive than the US, though the price looks steep.  For instance, apples at $3.89 look expensive, until you realize that it is for a kilogram not a pound.  There are 2.2 pound for every kilogram.  So the apples are more like $1.77 per pound.  Apples and melons are about the only fruit available now since it is winter.  The lettuce selection is lacking as well.  Packaged foods are much higher than US though.  I really dislike paying over $9 for a box of cereal.  This shopping trip really brought on some doubt.  As I am standing in the store, tired and jet lagged, with a tired, jet-lagged husband and three tired, jet-lagged kids, and I just need to pick out laundry detergent.  I have never heard of any of these brands.  They are all powders which don't rinse as cleanly out of clothes.  There were no fragnace free brands and I have no clue how my uber sensative skin is going to react to any of these detergents.  I started to doubt.  I started to doubt that up-rooting my kids and stressing out my extended family was going to be worth anything.  I froze and stood there doing nothing for several minutes, completely in panic mode.  At least, I was able to snap out of it and grab a random, small $12 box of detergent.  I am hoping that some of the prices are due to the fact that Nelson Bay is a resort town.  Hopefully, once we settle out of here, it will be a little more reasonable.
We had had such a good night of sleep the first night in Australia that I was hoping for another decent night last night.  Not so much.  Joe woke up around 2 in the morning and went to the bathroom.  Very thin walls caused Jay and I to awake as well.  Around 3, Joe decided to wake up Tom as well.  Once both of them were awake it was hard to keep them from waking up Sam, simply because they kept taking trips to the bathroom, which shares a wall with Sam's room.  Tom managed to fall back to sleep around 4ish.  Jay back to sleep around 5.  Joe may be asleep now at 7, but Sam and I are awake. 
Thankfully, the sky looks clear right now so we will be able to at least get out of the car and wander around. Now, to go eat some $9 cereal.