As a second-born child who is determined to give my second born as much as my first born, I am proud that I have survived the insane trek to England with Summer in tow. Now both Sophie and Summer have been to England and met Uncle Luke and Auntie Shanni!
When people ask how it was, I usually say something to the effect of "it was a nice trip... but it certainly wasn't a vacation." Even though I had my mom and Kathleen along, Summer was uncharacteristically fussy and clingy, so it often felt like it was just me and her. And my God, international travel with an infant sure is something else.
We had an evening flight out and all the excitement and newness meant she wouldn't go to sleep, even once on the plane.
It took a few hours but once she was out, it was pretty manageable and she woke up practically angelic. We had a layover in London and landed in Manchester around maybe 3 or 4p but it was already quite dark.
I was relieved we decided to stay in a hotel there rather than try to 4 hour train ride right then. We got to our hotel and had the longest night of our lives. We had room service and all crashed around 6p, then we all woke up rested... at 9p! It was so bizarre and then I made my mom stay with me and Summer until we all fell back asleep and who knows what time, and in the morning we we took the train up to Carlisle...
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| This was Summer's morning |
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She loves that upper snaggletooth that
lets her do stuff like this! |
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| Poor pack mule Kathleen :( |
and then finally to Maryport!
Everyone met everyone's babies and kitties, and then the next week and a half was full of... pretty much nothing. There was no plan other than meeting Orrin and supporting Shannon and Luke on this new journey. It was nice though, spending time with Shannon and Luke and sitting around and eating junk food and drinking coffee and taking care of babies and watching all our favorites. This is probably not an exhaustive list, but we watched... Friends, Arrested Development, The Office, Wolf of Wall Street, Bridesmaids, Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, Ja'mie King Private School Girl, Barney's Magical Musical Adventure, Ms. Rachel, Bluey, Gabby's Dollhouse, Peppa Pig, Popstar, Gilmore Girls, Spice World and more will probably come to me later.
The California family was so friggin cold that poor Luke went out and bought a space heater for our rooms and clothes for Summer (#momfail).
It was Kathleen's birthday while we were there, so some of their friends kindly may reservations for us at an Italian restaurant down in Whitehaven and even transported us all there and brought along things for Summer. (Fun fact, George Washington's grandmother is buried in the graveyard of the chapel across the street from the restaurant that we were at! I had a picture of it but a lot of pictures won't load because they were accidentally live images. Boo).
Other than that, it was pretty necessary for me to get Summer out of the house, so aside from visiting the Samoyeds at their house and looking at the sheep in the back pastures, she and I did a day in Carlisle, a trip to the aquarium with Kayla and Astrid, and a few days at the Maryport library where she got to play and read and we walked around the town a bit. It was quite lovely and quaint.
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| Indoor play place in Carlisle! |
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| Summer's reaction to Astrid haha |
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| Maryport library |
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| Irish Sea |
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| Coronation bench! |
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| November 2024 |
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| January 2019 |
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Family facetime the night
before we were flying home |
The way home was... something. We should have known it would turn into something the way Summer, out of absolutely nowhere (to us), stood up on a train seat and then puked up everywhere. We spent the night in Manchester again and long story short... our flight out of Manchester was delayed, Summer had multiple huge diaper blowouts requiring a change of clothes, we missed our connection out of London, got split up on the way home, and waited over an hour for luggage at LAX.
But alls well that ends well! We made it home with tons of horribly tacky gifts from the airport, and the reunion at home almost made the separation worth it! Not just for me, but Summer too. She was so thrilled to be home and see Sophie and AJ again, she was just giddy and delirious, it was sweet.
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| Sophie feeding Summer her yogurt the next morning |
We spent the long Thanksgiving weekend fighting Summer's jetlag and once she recovered, Sophie got a stomach bug that has her throwing up all her food.
Happy holidays everyone!
