Arrival in the USA

Home. Has a lovely ring to it, doesn't it.

We ended our world tour on July 31 and arrived in Dallas on Aug 1, 2009. The kids were sad to leave, but thrilled beyond words to get to travel home in business class. I actually think it turned out to be 1st class though because B and I sat on the front row of the plane. Very nice. She especially loved the seats which she was constantly adjusting :-) and the custom hot fudge sundaes. She got to pick all her sundae toppings. I think she was in heaven. L was back a few rows with DA adjusting his seat over and over too and over-dosing on movies. It's the simple things in life, you know!
I shed a few tears on the journey home. Sad to be leaving the adventure behind - and all my wonderful friends. Just a flood of emotions to be both sad and happy at the same time.
My parents and sister and nephews met us at the airport. OF COURSE, we went immediately to our favorite restaurant and ate some Mexican food. Love it.
Unfortunately our home was empty, so we did not get to move right back in. Stayed with my sister and her family for a while.
The craziest thing ever is that 36 hours after arrival, we started a major refurb on our house. I will never be able to fully express how overwhelming that was. I didn't even know which side of the road to drive on and I was being asked for paint colors and tile selections. I really wanted to be reconnecting with people, not shopping at the tile stores. My eyes were glazed. for days. for weeks. for months!
Many really frustrating things happened during our re - entry. They range from not being able to live in our house, to 4 people living out of 5 suitcases for 3 months, to moving to 12 different places to stay this summer before we could move into our house, to not being able to take delivery of our items when they arrived, to our mail office closing and not being able to find our mail - ever!, to several other really inconvenient events. whew. then comes the unpacking, including unpacking things I haven't seen in almost 3 years. What craziness.
I don't want to be a whiner, but I just want to record for my own memories that it was a heck of a reentry. All the difficulty I had been warned about was all true. Coming home was almost as crazy as going over there, not in the same ways, but still challenging on many levels.
As of this weekend, we will have been back for 12 weeks. Still not settled completely, still have to check before I open the car door to see if I'm getting in on the right side, still drinking my tea in my favorite English pottery - but happy to be home with my family and pets.

Wales

Our last trip was to Wales. Both DA and I believe our ancestors are Welsh, so we were glad to be able to visit there and let the kids see where their ancestors lived. Funny thing is that Wales is not really that far from where we had been living all that time, just needed to make ourselves get over there.
We stayed in a charming little pub/hotel called the Golden Pheasant. Unfortunately, it wasn't in a very convenient location to what we wanted to see, so we spent an hour or so each morning and evening driving to /from where we wanted to go.
We really enjoyed going to the top of Snowdon Mountain. One day we walked up part of it (too windy to go very far - nearly blew us off the mountain), and the next day we took a train from the bottom all the way to the summit. It was so cold at the top. We were not really dressed for that kind of weather. Also toured a slate mine. So sad that the slate industry has dried up. That little town had to basically fold up and move away.
Wales has more castles than any other country. They are everywhere you turn. The kids were really hoping we would just drive on by them all, but had to do one tour. Colwyn Castle and medieval village.
The kids enjoyed seeing the "smallest house in Britain". Cute little thing built in what looked like an alley between two buildings.
Our TomTom satnav decided we could handle all the tini-tiny roads in backwoods Wales, so it took us on some of the most remote routes. I noticed that Wales is sparsely populated - it's mainly open land with a few little towns along the way.(only saw about 2 gas stations the entire time - not too helpful when you are in the car an hour, need a drink or something to eat).
Pretty, pretty country, but not a lot to see.
One of the loveliest spots is Portmerion, Wales. It is associated with the pottery called Portmerion - and they sell it there, but I think the association is something about that the town was built or designed by the daughter of the pottery maker. We were there during the hydrangea blooming season. Oh, oh! gorgeous hydrangeas. Prettiest trees I've ever seen. I did buy 2 Portmerion pieces that had flowers on them to remind me of the gardens in Portmerion, however the pottery was made in my beloved Stoke on Trent in England.
By the end of the week, we were ready to get back to Cobham to wrap up the last details. It's hard to be focused on traveling when you are trying to move internationally. Enjoyed it, but I don't know if we did justice to Wales - our thoughts were too scattered.

One last trip to the Lake District

After our trip to Glasgow, Scotland, the kids and I drove down to the Lake District for one last look around. I love that area. So pretty and scenic. We stayed in the same lodge again, but this time it wasn't quite as cushy as our last stay. A little on the "hmmm" side of things. Definitely worth it to spend more on the upscale cabin if you can.
We did a hike, rented a boat on lake Windermere for the air show, did kayaking on the lake, and our favorite thing - the GO APE course. GO APE is a high ropes course that is a franchise company. One of their great courses is in the Lake District. All the tall trees make for a perfect high ropes course. We were able to zip line for what seemed a 1/4 of a mile over the road. It took 3 hours to do the course without stopping. Fun for the whole family! Do it if you have the chance. Fortunately B was old enough and tall enough to do the course. I think it might end up being her favorite thing EVER in Europe.
I took lots of photos since I didn't know when we would ever get back here.
(postscript : our photos are no longer in our possession. Everything was stolen - computer, SD card, and our back up hard drive...Unfortunately we never made a photo book of the Lake district area so all those thousands of photos I took have to stay in my head :-( wish I had at least uploaded some of them to the blog.)
It rained most of the week we were in Windermere, but that was ok by me.
One crazy side note - we were traveling with all of our luggage that we needed for the entire summer (5 heavy bags plus a couple of carryons) - remember we are without a home at this point. We were required to have all our jewelry and important papers with us since the movers would not insure those things if they were taken inside the shipping container. Anyway, I made the major mistake of leaving my jewelry bag in the safe in our Glasgow hotel, but the safe was OPEN. Could have easily been stolen. Had I only known that was a precursor to what was coming later in the summer. Anyway, we had moved out of the house, so our phone number and address that the hotel had was null and void. The hotel graciously put my jewelry case in their main safe and tried to contact us, but we were unreachable.
Oh, by the way, my jewelry case also included OUR PASSPORTS!!! and my wedding ring. Not good at all.
DA happened to ask me where the passports were and that is when we discovered that we didn't have possession of them any more. I took a train back to Glasgow the next morning and was so fortunate to be able to pick them up from the hotel. Major, major blessing.
Needless to say, that kind of put a gloomy spell on the rest of our stay in the Lake District.
... Moving on... literally... we moved on to our last and final touring spot, Wales.

Way behind on blogging

I am so behind on my blogging. Sorry Mom and Dad :-)
We've been traveling around the UK and the internet connection has been spotty at best. There was no way I could upload photos, so I will fill in the missing travel entries soon.

However, today was our LAST DAY of touring in the UK - and what did we finish with?????

A very fitting old, empty medieval castle...where, as L says, "somebody lived, they did something famous, now they're dead and this is their castle."

Stopped in Ludlow, which is a scenic Elizabethan town in Shropshire in Western England with lots of timber houses. Just like what you would picture it looking like when Shakespeare was writing plays. It was pouring down rain all day, so my photos didn't turn out too well. For you Tudor fans, Ludlow castle is famous for being where Catherine of Aragon and her first husband, Prince Arthur stayed. Prince Arthur died at Ludlow on their honeymoon, and Catherine went on to marry his brother, King Henry VIII and was the first of his six wives.

We have all our "moving luggage" with us in a small "saloon" car, as they say. Americans call them sedans. We had to put 3 suitcases in the back seat so the kids rode for hours in a tiny little cramped space. No wonder they were more interested in getting back to our town instead of hanging around and touring Ludlow.

We are spending our last 2 days getting some last minute details taken care of and then we are off to Texas. Touring is done. If it's not marked of the list by now, it'll have to wait til another visit.

the Open Championship

The Open Championship golf tournament (aka British Open to us Americans), is being held at Turnberry in Scotland. We spent the day at the tournament today. Saw Tiger CHOKE and Tom Watson get some great shots. What an unexpected result. Nice to see our home town kid, Justin Leonard playing well too.

Cameras and phones are not allowed at the course, so we don't have photos. Just as well. DA would be consumed with getting the perfect shots, so this way we were all watching together ;-)

Here's one shot from the car park. Notice the "welcome to Turnberry" with the Aisla Craig island in the distance. That's it folks. Only picture we took!!!! (that's amazing - not the image, but that we only took one picture)

L was determined to get an autograph, so he snuck behind the stands into the media area by shimmying up to a photographer and walking in with him. He didn't get the elusive autograph, but he got all the way down to Tiger's car and Tiger waved to him before he got into his car. There were several guards around him, so a wave will have to do. L was pleased with himself that he made it back to that area. Just know it was NOT his mother who encouraged him to do so!

The weather was spotty - some clouds, some light rain, some sunshine, but definite wind. Not as windy as last year, but enough to keep you chilled. B wore shorts, but by the end of the day, she had 3 jackets on layered on top of each other.

Staying in Glasgow. Not too many hotels out by Turnberry. It's a great course right by the Irish Sea, but it is located on a 2 lane road. That is probably fine the other years that it's not the Open course, but on this particular week - that 2 lane road is packed. Traffic took a long time to wind through all the local villages all the way back to Glasgow.

Here's B in the Irish Sea (stopped in Troon for this shot).

Packing problems

People, it's hard to pack when it's cold, rainy and 59 degrees here. Gotta have clothes to stay warm and then when we hit the 100 degrees in Texas we have to have clothes to stay cool. Coats and long pants take up too much room. Not fitting in my bag!!!!

12 Days of cruising

We did it, completed our 12 day cruise. It was great. So glad we were able to go and enjoy being with our friends one last time before we all go our separate ways.
I highly recommend letting your kids stay in a separate room on a long cruise. Those rooms, even the nice ones, have very limited storage and bathroom capacity. It would have been very difficult to manage with all 4 of us in one room for such a long time. The kids absolutely loved running around the boat, eating ice cream and doing all the activities and swimming.
The Baltic was so pretty, not as pretty as the Mediterranean, but very interesting to see that part of the world.