First Week in London!

Freshly arrived from the airport to Paddington Station (as in Paddington Bear)

Wow! What a week! This has been a week of fun, excitement, jet-lag, adventure, learning, fatigue, figuring things out...

With a week and a half notice, we packed up our family for a month and took off for the other side of the world. [Our preparation is a post in itself for the future.] I finally have my head above water for a few minutes to begin to document our adventure.

Austin is working on a project with a client in London. We have been wanting to have a family experience of living in another country, this opportunity came up, and we would be silly not to take it. Granted, its just 5 weeks, but we have rented a flat and can get a taste of real life in a new country and new culture. We pulled the kids out of school. They will keep up their studies in math and study culture, history, art, urban living, & life experience while we're here.

We’ve had a week now to figure out a few things. Austin is balancing working on two continents with only 24 hours in a day. I am running a house in a foreign country in a huge city and managing 4 kids solo as we fit in sight seeing with a minimum attention span of a 3-year old and tired legs of a 6-year old. It's been amazing so far. Exhausting too. What a week!

The Travel

Katie and Abbie wouldn’t mind taking international flights more often. They thought it was way too short. Not enough time to watch all the shows they wanted to on their personal TV systems. Plus all that cute little food!


A few days before our departure, Lizzie came down with a nasty stomach bug. Although it seemed bad timing, I figured it was good she learn what-it-feels-like for future reference; and hey, at least it wasn’t on our flight. What I didn’t take into account was the incubation period was perfect for the nasty bug to appear in Avery during our flight from Boston to London! Austin earned all sorts of parenting points for being her seat-mate on that flight!

At 6:30am, we arrived sleepless to London-Heathrow at the same time as 1000’s of others and found ourselves in the queue-from-you-know-where to get through customs. After 2 hours of standing, and in the middle of rows and rows of snaking switchbacks, Avery got sick again in one of many bags we snagged from the airplane. Austin quick jumped out of line and found an agent to take us right away. I don’t think the 100’s of people around us minded much when Avery carried her sick bag as we departed. Thanks Avery - we saved another 2 hours in that line! From what I heard in line, this is how Heathrow operates every Sunday morning. Wish we knew better. Consider yourself warned. Don’t fly into London Heathrow on a Sunday morning.

While in the crazy line at the airport, Katie says to me, “I guess I don’t get jet-lagged. I feel just fine.” Just keep thinking that Katie, just wait until tomorrow...