Back in North America!

I am writing this from the comfort of the rocking chair in my parent's home in beautiful Woodland Park, Colorado -- which means we made it! I am also writing this at 5 a.m. local time (having been awake with three very awake kids since 3:30 a.m. local time, 10:30 a.m. England time) -- which means we might have some jet lag woes in the coming days.

But we made it! It was one of our easier travel days, in the big picture (if you can call a 20-hour-travel day easy). After considering our "typical" way to the airport (which would have involved a taxi to the train station, a short train ride to Cambridge, a taxi to the bus depot, and a long bus ride to Heathrow), I thought of our friend in London, Ravi, who travels a lot and hires someone to drop him at the airport. So I started researching that and found it would cost only 20 pounds more to hire someone (in a HUGE minivan) to take us from our door in Ely to Terminal 5 at Heathrow that it would to pay for five tickets and all of those taxis that would be required in the nightmare plan (to say nothing of lifting all of that luggage).

It was the best 20 pound splurge we've spent -- we liked it so much, we tipped the man an extra 10 pounds (and STILL it was worth it!).

So we said goodbye to Ely, and got to the airport in plenty of time. We had to rearrange some luggage since we didn't have a scale at the rental house... but even that worked out well. A lunch of pasta and the usual drill of checking in, security, and the rest, and we made our way to the gate. The 777 was waiting... it is so magnificent to see.

And the rest was relatively painless. The kids settled in comfortably and even managed to sleep a few hours of the 9.5 hour flight (John didn't sleep but saw three good movies... I think I slept an hour and enjoyed two movies too -- Mr and Mrs Smith and Up in the Air.

The only trouble of the whole travel day came at the very end, in fact... it happened after we had gotten off the plane from our almost backrow seats, after we had waited in line and gone through immigration, and as we were waiting to pick up our luggage. At that moment, a very eager Beagle from the U.S. Department of Agriculture sniffed out the apples I had in our bag -- apples which were part of the kids' lunches and given to us on the plane. I had even (thankfully) declared them... but because we were "sniffed out", we still got sent to a L-O-N-G line at the Department of Agricultre and had to have every piece of luggage rescanned to make sure we weren't importing any other dangerous goods. Knowing my parents were just outside the doors and having to have one extra line and delay was hard on all of us... but eventually, the bags were rescanned (no contraband found) and we happily rushed out to hugs and kisses from my patient parents, who had, at that point, been waiting several hours for us.

Oh, it was so good to see them. And as we walked out of the airport and I saw the Rocky Mountains in the distance, their blue gauzy silhouettes so wonderfully familiar, I caught my breath. Europe may be unbeatable when it comes to man-made beauty (nothing quite matches those castles and abbeys and convents and cobbled streets), but I don't know if there is anything that can match the Rockies of the US and Canada when it comes to natural beauty. And in less than an hour, as the sun fully rises, I will get my first view of Pike's Peak, which is perhaps the most beautiful of all.

So we are happy to be home and thrilled to see my family this week and John's next. We are jetlagged (very). We miss our France friends so very much. And we can't wait to get home to Lethbridge to see all of the good friends we missed there. That's how we're doing, I guess!


And finally -- thanks to anyone who sent good wishes our way yesterday... we really felt it as we sailed through a stressful day. Just two big travel days left -- whew!