Catch Up Post

It has been FOREVER since I have posted on here! So sorry for the delay - moving overseas will do that to you! I will try to hit some highlights to catch us up to date with everyone, especially since most of you received our Christmas letter with blog address and may pop on to see what's up and if you see the last post was last summer you might start to wonder! Okay, here's my attempt to catch up:

Leaving Colorado/Maine Trip

We were VERY sad to leave our home, friends, church, & my sister in Colorado Springs! However, we were ready to embark on this adventure that the Air Force sent us on! We drove to Dallas, Texas to stay with our dear friends and the kids' godparents, the Thomas family. While there, we delivered our van to the port for shipping to England. We had a wonderful time there just hanging out and visiting - the kids all played and swam and the adults swam and played games after the kids went to bed!

Our next leg of the journey was flying to Maine to visit Debbie's parents and sister, extended family, and many close friends. We stayed at my parents new beautiful summer home in Maine. The weather had been very rainy all summer until the week we arrived and it was absolutely beautiful the whole time we were there! Here are the kids eating breakfast at my parent's house:

Another fun event was that my 20-year High School Reunion was in Maine in August, so I was able to visit with many close friends. One of my dear friends, Jeffa (her name is Jennifer but when we were growing up her little brother called her "Jeffa" and the nickname stuck, even to this day!) and her husband hosted many close family and friends at their beautiful lake house! We had a wonderful time catching up and meeting each other's children! Here are several of my closest friends from high school:

The next day was the actual reunion where we were able to visit with even more people:

There was also a big family reunion with my Mon's side of the family - many aunts, uncles, & cousins that I had not seen in YEARS! My Aunt Betty & Uncle Ben hosted all of us at their beautiful house on the lake. We waterskiied and rode on paddle and motor boats and swam in the lake - it was great fun! Here's a group photo minus my cousin Jillaine who took the picture:

We also went to the coast one day and found snails, hermit crabs, regular crabs and fish - it was so much fun! Another day we were able to see cousins, the Connollys who drove up from Connecticut - always a pleasure to see all of them. And of course, we HAD to have some "lobstah" and the famous and delicious whoopie pies - see below:

We packed many events into a little less than a week in Maine - it was busy and fun! Here's a picture of Catherine with Grandpa - they had lots of fun going on walks together up in Maine!

[Wanted to insert here that we left from Maine to fly over here to
England and about 1 1/2 weeks after we arrived in England, my Dad had a heart attack, out of the blue. Praise God that he is alive and doing well now. I thank all of the people who are out there that prayed for my father and mother during the time of the heart attack and during his recovery. It was very hard being so far away while all of this was going on. Thankfully my sister was able to fly to Maine to be there while Dad was in the hospital and to get he & Mom back home. Also, Mom and Dad had many dear friends and family in the area that helped out during this time - thank you to all of them too! I thank God for my Mom & Dad - they have done so much for me and my family and they continue to adjust to their "new normal" with God's grace and help - Love to you, Mom & Dad!]

Trip to England

After all of the fun in Maine, we began the long journey to England with 4 kids and 7 carry-ons and 9 checked bags - wow! My sister was able to help again as she had the same flight from Maine to New York and helped get all of the kids and baggage from one terminal to another before returning to her terminal to fly back to Colorado. Our favorite part of the trip was when we showed up to check in and were told that we had no tickets - only a reservation made a long time ago. There we were with all of the kids and bags, so Tom called an emergency travel number and they were able to fix the problem and about 30 minutes later we did have actual tickets for the flight we were scheduled for!

Our next adventure was that on the 7 hour plane ride from New York to London through the night, we discovered that Adam does indeed have motion sickness as he threw up several times on the flight and then continued to be sick (into his air sickness bag) as we walked through the airport, customs, and rode the bus for 2 hours to our new base, RAF Mildenhall - poor Adam! Here are the kids on the plane over to London:
Here are all of the kids once we arrived in England wearing all of their new rain gear to head out into the rain: We actually experienced wonderful weather here in England when we arrived - it was sunny pretty much every day with a few sprinkling showers a couple of days. We are told that this is abnormal and we should not always expect this kind of weather, but we enjoyed it! Once we moved into our new house, we did not yet have our shipments of household goods, so the first night, Tom read by nightlight plugged into our transformer as the voltage is different over here:

Newmarket Family Day

We ventured out to the town of Newmarket while we were still living in the TLF(Temporary Living Facilities) on base. They had a family day one Saturday with some fun events. We saw our first live Punch & Judy show - lots of audience participation and some very interesting content. At the end of the show there was a disclaimer that this is a traditional show and no one is really hurt during the show (it's all puppets, there is lots of whacking each other):

Both Catherine and Jonah wanted to try the horse racing simulator. Newmarket is famous for horse racing. Here they are below taking their turns as jockeys:

Kids Start School

The boys' first day of school was before we had moved into our new house, so we were still in the TLF for this picture. They are all going to Department of Defense schools (DoDS) on-base. They now have to ride a bus from our house (they all ride the same bus, but Jonah & Adam are in the Elementary School & Jack is in the Middle School) that picks them up at 0730 and drops them off at 1550 - makes for a long day!

Catherine started going to school for the first time over here too - She attends a preschool called Busy Bees - it's off-base. The school is absolutely wonderful. It's in an old English cottage with beautiful flowers blooming everywhere and it's on a farm with lots of animals including Alpaca's that she gets to go out and see/feed/pet. The staff there are wonderful and she loves it there! She goes 3 mornings a week for about 4 hours. Here she is on her first day with her new book bag:

That is probably long enough for our first post since being here! I'll now try to break up the remaining info into other posts.