Seriously? It's been almost a month!? Lots to fill you in on.
Ben "retired" (his term, not mine) on April 1. Since then we've been crazy busy planning the move and a birthday party, but since he doesn't become re-employed for another two weeks, hopefully he'll get a little downtime in soon. We did manage to take a trip to Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge. Beautiful. But we were so wiped out by that that trip that we cancelled the additional day trip to Canterbury that we had hoped to go on. It's been unbelievably fantastic to have Ben home, both for helping take care of Jack and for rediscovering how much we love spending time with one another. I don't think I could have gone through such a stressful two-week period with anyone else in the world by my side.
Jack turned 1 on Sunday, officially putting him in the toddler as opposed to infant category, which has made me a little sentimental. Of course, he is now walking so much and so well that it would be hard for me to deny that he's a toddle-er. He's seriously all over the place. Even those of you who saw him our last few days in London wouldn't believe how well he's now walking just a week later!
The birthday festivities lasted all weekend--from the crawfish boil that Grammy and Granddad held for him in Houston on Friday through the massive family blowout at Nonna and Pops's house in Warrensburg on Sunday afternoon. Jack loved it--he was all smiles all the time.
Jack's birthday presents from Ben and me included, among other things, a rocking horse with a bit of a twist and a set of nuts and bolts for him to twist. But his favorite present from us seems to be his toy baby grand piano. Super cute. He looks like Schroeder while banging on it. I promise to post lots of pictures as soon as I find our camera cord that's somewhere in one of our suitcases.
Which brings me to our other big news--we've made our move! After two days of the movers packing and many tears with Stacy (and lots more once we were actually apart), we left for the airport hotel Tuesday night. The 10 1/2 hour flight to Houston was amazing. Jack took 2 naps of over an hour and a half each. As we were getting off the plane about half the other passengers stopped to wave bye-bye to Jack and tell him by name that he had been such a good boy on the flight. He also slept the entire 2 hour flight from Houston to Kansas City. Amazing.
Monday we made the trek to St. Louis to see our house for the first time. Nonna and Pops and Uncle Stephen and his girlfriend Kelly did a fantastic job--we were thrilled to see where we'll be living. Unfortunately we've hit a little snag in the closing process (it's a long story), so instead of closing tomorrow morning as we were supposed to, we now may be staying with Uncle Stephen a few more days and not closing until Thursday or Friday. Really frustrating, but now we're in the home stretch. Of course, we won't have much to put in our brand new house (which is over 3 times the size of our London flat!) at first because our shipment from the movers isn't supposed to arrive until mid-May! So I suppose a few more days shouldn't make that big a difference!
We'll be sending out an email to everyone with our new address and cell phone numbers, and again, once we get settled I promise lots more pictures and more frequent updates. Just because we're closer to home doesn't mean I'm going to stop the blog.
