One Year

One year ago today, I arrived in the UK. The journey here actually started in March of 2010 when Jeff interviewed, was offered, and then accepted a position as a research fellow just north of London. At the time Jeff was finishing up his PhD, we owned a home, had 19 month old, and I was 6 months pregnant.

Writing and defending a doctoral dissertation is never easy.

Selling a home is a stressful nightmare.

Taking care of a 19 month old has it's DEFINITE challenges.

Pregnancy (at least for me), is 9 months of torture.

Delivery (in my case a C-section), recovery, and taking care of a new baby is exhausting. [Luckily, we were so busy the last few weeks before we left Texas that we didn't even notice the "interrupted "sleep. We would get home late, sleep for 3-4 hours and leave again, dragging the baby around with us.]

A first child who doesn't want ANYTHING to do with his new baby brother (other than to throw things at him and scream) is stressful.

Moving in general is A LOT of work. Especially when you  have 5 mini-moves around the COUNTRY in between.

And, planning an International move is one of the hardest, most stressful experiences of my life. Passports, visas, biometrics, selling belongings, sorting, storing, moving, shipping, adjusting to a new life, culture, etc - I could go on and on, but I won't.


But doing them all together at the same time!? That is insanity!

And it was.

But I won't start there. I will start at the final steps in our journey. I won't go into the other, except to say that we were very blessed to have family members come from out of town to help make the process easier on us. Dan, Brienne, and Sadie drove the 9 hour (each way) journey to help while I cleaned out my house to get it ready for the market. Deena flew in to help out in any way she could. Tiffany flew in from Utah to help with the boys (and with Darcie before she had her baby). My mom and dad flew in from Utah to help out with the two new babies being born. Jeff's mom flew in from New Jersey to help out with our new baby. And, Darcie and Zeus were always nearby to help out and to let us move in after we sold our house, but before we left Texas. We were also blessed with amazing friends who did all they could to help out - from letting us use their HOUSE for a week to store our remaining belongings after we moved out of our house, to hosting a garage sale for us, to picking up the massive piece of counter top Jeff had forgotten to take to the dump before he flew to the UK, to watching Nathan for me. And, the list could go on.

In addition to all of the above, Darcie and Zeus were also having their first baby (in the city we lived in at the time) and my brother Michael and his now wife, Deena, were getting married (in NW Washington and we were able to attend).

But like I said, I'm not going to start there...