I know if you've been keeping up I should be posting about the remainder of our trip, so I'll give you a brief wrapping up because surely I've been dragging this thing out for far too long and it's time to move on to fresher, more exciting things...?! :D
We left beautiful Paree and headed to London where we picked up a rental car. Eeep. Because we had chosen to not pick up the car at Heathrow ( since we were arriving on the train ) we ended up collecting it from the center of the city. Picture REALLY narrow roads, TONS of cars and all on the wrong side of the road!! We DID manage to get out of there and onto a northerly motorway but it wasn't easy and we sure as heck wished we had paid that extra for the bloody on board GPS. THREE TIMES we missed the turn off for the motorway!!! Once we got on the motorway though, we were good to go. They are fast (usually) and well sign posted so we were on our way to see my Mum! ;D
Mum lives in a little house in a small town in Lincolnshire. In order to get to her climbing rose covered front door you have to cross a little bridge over a sweet stream on which ducks float by. It's pretty dang picture~skew! Although her house is really small, she does such a lovely job of making us feel welcome! EVERYTHING we could have needed she had already thought of, food, clothes, treats, comfy beds for the kids ( and us of course!) diapers and wipes for the baby, baby food... everything. It was lovely to be so pampered! We stayed with Mum for a few days and then moved out to an enormous converted barn in a closeby village.
From there we visited some of my old school friends and went to see my Dad, step mum and their dog, Jasper!
We couldn't have enjoyed our visit more... well, we could.. if we could have stayed longer! It's lovely to visit family and friends and old haunts from childhood and college days, but we had to come back to Nebraska...! We went to London on our last day in the country and stayed in a very fancy hotel right by the airport. We took advantage of the free bus service and headed into the city for our last night ( also Rex's birthday! ). We visited Leicester Square, rode the underground and had dinner in the Hard Rock Cafe. They make QUITE a fuss of you on your birthday there!!!
The next morning it was off to return the rental car and then to begin the very tedious process of getting out of Heathrow. Lines, lines, lines. Our return flight was FULL up and the back of the plane was loaded with children!! (I think they put EVERYONE with kids in the back of the plane, no kidding!) It was quite noisy and as we were flying with the sun, no one got any sleep at all!
We arrived in Minneapolis and had to run the gauntlet of security, the fruit sniffing dogs and the grilling of the immigration officials... We then had to go through the shoe removal and explosive residue test all the while listening to this TSA official with the DEEEEEEPEST voice ANYONE had ever heard!! You could see and hear people all around you looking and whispering ( "That guy's voice is SOOO deep!" ) He just kept repeating "PLEASE TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES" but I WISH I could have video taped him! ( I wasn't going to chance it thanks~ )
After a lot of waiting our last little flight arrived and we staggered on. Not one of us was awake for take off and Jack was so fast asleep on arrival we LITERALLY had to drag him off the plane, still sleeping!! We arrived back at Lincoln airport to find April and Judy waiting for us!
It was so lovely to see them and to get back home again! Our pets were pleased to see us though one of our cats kept hiding and peering around the corners at us as if to make sure it was really us!! Poor kitty!
Anyway, that, in a nutshell, was the remainder of our trip! :D It was an epic journey ( kind of! ) and we really REALLY loved it. Since we got home Jessie has spray painted her bedroom wall deep blue and painted an Eiffel tower and the night sky on it...!! We'll go back again... SOON I hope!!!
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