More Marvelous than the Day Before

WE ARE HERE!!!

As of this moment, I am sitting in the Reading Library at an internet terminal. It's free, but much slower than the pay terminals I used last year. Julie is in my lap, Steve is behind me at another terminal, and Mom and the big 2 are downstairs in the children's area.

Quick summary:
Made all the flights and connections fine. Only the strollers and backpack didn't make the trip over on the same plane as us, but they arrived only 15 minutes after we had gathered up all our luggage. Our flight was 30 minutes late loading and another hour late to take off, but we ended up being only 1 hour late into London. We were near the back of the plane, so we just waited for everyone else to unload before we did. When we got to customs, we were mildly harrassed by the grumpy customs agent who accused us of being "very clever" because we are in England for 6 months minus 1 day - which requires no visa. Of course the guy is wrong because Steve doesn't need a visa if he's getting paid by a foreign government, but that's another matter together.

Stuffed everything into the rental van - which is indeed an automatic - and headed out. The stuffing part was interesting because we had 10 suitcases (only one of which was over the 50 lb. limit), 7 carry-ons, 3 carseats, 2 strollers, 2 preschoolers, 1 infant, 1 grandmother, and 2 very tired parents. And a backpack to carry a child.

We decided to go to Windsor Castle first to get out and try to start getting ourselves on "England time". We stopped at a pub along the way and had a a pretty decent lunch, then went on. Thank goodness for the GPS! We were lost enough with it - we would have been halfway to Scotland without it! Windsor was great - more about it in another post.

Got to the cottage after much stressful driving. I navigated. Who in the world thought of roundabouts? It's like a free-for-all! The cottage has 4 beds and sleeps 5 plus a pack & play for Julie that they provided for us. We have a living room, a dining room, kitchen, laundry room, 3 bedrooms, and 1 bathroom. It's very pasotral and bucolic (a word my Mom has used more than once since we've been there).

Next day after everyone had a FULL night's sleep, we had lunch at Subway, then went to the grocery store, where we were happy to find Old El Paso taco shells, soured cream (sour cream), cream of mushroom soup, and ice. We got more stuff, but those were the things were were happy to see. Oh - and ground beef. Steve actually said, "Praise God. They have real ground beef."

Today it is 4p.m. while I'm writing this. We're going to walk around a little more in Reading at the Oracle shopping center, go to Boots the Chemist (pharmacy), and check out another grocery store.

We have a cell phone! E-mail if you want the number. I'm not going to post it here, and I don't have e-mail addresses at this public computer.

The kids are all doing VERY well and were wonderful on the flights. I'll try to post more before too long. We're supposed to get into our house on Thursday.

XXOO
The Nolens