Bon Voyage! Complete with a Leaving Do, Cybermummy, & a Birthday.

The last two weeks have been filled with laughter, tears, overly tight and long hugs, more tears, some screaming at the kids, frantic packing, yet more tears, and the over-arching awareness everywhere I go that it may well be for the "last time."

I've come up with a way to make it through all this by telling myself that maybe things won't work out in the US, and we'll just move back in September! :: broad smile :: Our visa is still good for another year, Daddy-007 could come back to get a Master's degree. Shall we all play along with that, so the blow of leaving is softened by the passage of time? Yes? Thank you.

Also softening the blow? Blogging Central: Chilling on the porch by the lake in my John Lewis shades.

I will be back again in a few weeks, actually, and then again in September to close out our accounts (or to find a new house! :: all puppy-eyed eagerness ::), so it doesn't feel like forever at all. And I rest easy knowing that the internet will keep me close to the friends I've made and allow me to continue being part of their lives, just as it has kept me up to speed on the lives of my friends back home in the States.

It was really hard for me to untangle my feelings while I was still there and immersed in all that is England. I could barely register that I was excited to get home, and thrilled to see old friends and beloved family. (The most difficult part, by far, of living the expat life is not having your family nearby, so we are all over the moon to have Grandma and Grandpa back within driving distance.)  Now that we're here, though, we are each reveling in the various things that make America different from the UK.

LIKE MY CAR.

My Toyota Sienna seems freaking PALATIAL there is so much room in it!  And the automatic transmission! Dreamy!! The Animal ran around inside of it hooting "Mom! Mom! Lookit, I can walk around inside the car!!!" and then begged to put a movie in to watch on the way to Target.  And then their heads just about exploded when we got to the Target and they were confronted with those extra wide aisles of so, so many things! We ended up leaving with almost $130 worth of junk food (corn dogs, mac & cheese, Oreos, Lucky Charms, Cookie Crisp, Triscuits, etc...) Every single thing in our cart was an item that can't be purchased (except the Lucky Charms - for £7 ($10) a box) in the UK. Yum and yuck, all at the same time... all the food is so processed, but it all tastes so damn good!  I swear I'll go back to eating healthy again, but I'm just going to savor the chemical love for a few more days.

I've got loads to write still about our travels over the pond and the Cybermummy Conference in London last Saturday, but time is an ever precious commodity that there never seems to be enough of for writing, so bare with me!

I leave you with this little video of Destructo, who upon eating some American-style Chinese at the airport in Philadelphia (where our flight laid over on the way to Minneapolis), proclaimed, "I'm sorry, Mom, but GOD BLESS AMERICA! This Chinese is the best ever!"