Last Days

It's Saturday, and after a drizzly start to the day, the sun is now pouring down on old Blighty. It's a beautifully exquisite day, one of the kind that doesn't seem to come here nearly quite often enough, and so is enjoyed and celebrated all the more when it does arrive. Dalton, being the home body that he is, has yet to get out of his pajamas, despite the fact that it is now almost three o'clock in the afternoon, while Maggie has dressed herself with all the fashion sense of Punky Brewster and is trotting about in our back garden.

This past week has flown by - I flew out to Holland again on Sunday night, and returned late Tuesday. Dalton had his last Cubs meeting on Wednesday night, and the kids' last day of school was yesterday, since they're all getting out for Easter break now. That made for an interesting day, to say the least. Maggie was incredibly saddened by the knowledge that she wouldn't be going back to school there, and I think that it kind of served as a wake-up call that soon we will be somewhere else. The kids got goodbye cards from their classmates, with pictures and drawings that will always serve as a reminder of our time here.

It's funny that despite the trials and struggles we've had, somehow, along the way, a little piece of England snuck into our hearts and souls. Although we're excited to be returning home, we will miss it here, our adopted home. We've made promises to return and visit, and we hope to receive visitors in our little home town of Birmingham, Alabama. Maggie, I think will probably be the most profoundly affected - as Mich pointed out, she will have spent almost a third of her life here, and I imagine that some of her first memories will be of Great Britain and our adventures.

In other news, we've finalised the arrangements for our shipping, and most of our other plans are slowly falling into place as well, although the timeline for them to do so is really quite short. That being said, most of the big items have been sorted, and it's mostly over, except for the packing.