We’ve moved to England! We arrived this morning and as I’m writing this it is so surreal to me that we’re actually here. I mean serious jet lag side effects definitely have nothing to do with that right? I’ll give a quick summary of how this whole thing came about….
Sean started working for the Europe team a few years ago. He would travel once a year to their Europe convention for a week. Then, with some changes he started traveling specifically to the England office every other month at the beginning of this year. Our moving over was something that started to be discussed and in August we decided to look more seriously at that option. Sean and I came out to look at housing and to let me get a feel for what it would be like living here. It really didn’t take much convincing.
Getting our visa’s took a little bit more time than we expected. (Our timing on starting the visa applications wasn’t the best, it corresponded with the start of Brexit for England so things got extended a little bit). But 4 months later things went through.
It ended up being a good thing that we had the 4 months of prep time. I had been able to start going through our stuff and doing some serious de-junking. We were able to find and solidify a house, and I could figure out what was going with us and what wasn’t. This was all a huge blessing because our visa’s went through and our flights were booked for a week later. So our last week consisted of some organized chaos focused around packing, shipping and selling things we weren’t keeping. And of course, just as kids usually do, our kids decided it was the perfect week to catch every little bug that was going around. Thankfully they got sick at the beginning of the week so they were on the mending side of things when we left.
We left at 6:00 a.m. to catch our flight in Salt Lake City, had a layover in Detroit and then made it to London at 7:00 a.m. Considering the 20 hours of travel, our kids did great. They were able to get some sleep. We didn’t sleep at all, but I mean that was our expectation, and with no crying babies, toddler tantrums and an awesome 5 year old helper we were totally okay with the no sleep situation.
(I couldn’t resist getting a video of Kenni and her walk. She walks like this everywhere we go)
Now if you mentioned the baggage situation, we might have some not so pleasant comments to share with you. I mean when your shipment of belongings won’t get to you for 9 weeks you have to make sure you take what you’ll need from now until then. This came out to equal a lot of luggage. Things were fine and dandy until we arrived in London. I mean luggage aside, with our carry ons, kids carseats and stroller we were already a sight to behold. We walked down to customs and the line was so long that it went clear down the hall outside the main customs room (which if any of you have seen those customs areas, they are not small). When we finally made it into the customs area we realized we were in for a 3 hour line situation. Thankfully, a WONDERFUL airport employee told Sean that we could skip to the handicap line. As we passed her, she said “just tell them we told you to come through because the babies were screaming”. That woman was a blessing, because our kids were not making one peep. If we’d been stuck in the 3 hour line, then yes they most likely would have definitely been doing exactly what she said. Then it was on to figuring out the luggage situation. I wish now that I’d taken a picture of our amazing balancing act, but in a moment like that pictures really aren’t on your mind.
A driver in a van (large enough for all of us and our never ending luggage) picked us up and dropped us off at the short stay apartment we’ll be in for a few days as we get some beds into our currently empty house.
It has been so fun to see the kids excitement and so surreal to take them with us to places we came to in August. We are so excited for this new adventure and all thats in store!
Life of a Price 