This morning while all the kids were still asleep ( all still a bit off due to jet lag it seems and sleeping later than usual) I managed to sort out the camera and find the cord to attach it to the computer and get the pictures off of it. Hurrah!

I have pics from Hallowe’en and our Federal Way hotel stay that I’ve been meaning to get posted here and now finally I can.

There is a huge gap in the updating of our journey between when we left Washington and today and it feels as though I’ve missed the window to catch up on all of that. I think Dave had some idea of going back and chronicalling the insanity of the flights and our arrival at some point and so I’ll leave it to him to back track ( which is funny due to his hatred of ‘backtracking’ ).
We’re getting settled in here pretty well. Just in the past few days the kids seem to be starting to sort themselves out. For the first week Aidan wouldn’t sleep and was constantly grumping about how England is “dumb” and he hates it here and why did we make him move etc. etc. but since Sunday he seems in better spirits.

The flats are great, no complaints. The neighbourood, while not where I can see us living permanently is perfectly nice and convenient to shops and the Tube which is nice. The kids’ flat is right next door and we spend the day going back and forth. I’m extremely grateful for the second flat simply because it means we have a second washer/dryer. These machines hold approximately 8 items and take hours to complete the wash and dry so laundry is a bit of a chore. If I had to do it in just one machine I would never manage. We must see about getting larger machines in our house if it doesn’t have them because doing laundry in these teeny combo-machines will just not work as a long term thing.

We haven’t done too much sightseeing because the kids have all been too tired/grumpy/sick/miserable to want to go do anything. The big boys would gladly be out doing things but it is no fun if it means dragging grumpy littles along with us. Now that their sleep schedule is settling down and they’re starting to eat again ( waaaay too much Hallowe’en candy combined with being shuffled off to grandma’s and the constant upheaval of travel had really messed with their already sketchy eating habits) they’re in better spirits and are interested in going out and about. We’ve got a nice sunny day today and so are heading out to the Natural History Museum this afternoon and then to meet Daddy down by his office. Luckily I’ll have Spence and Jess along to help me find my way, I’d be lost ( literally!) without them.

We took some good pictures of our arrival here, our flats ( and the flats in Mayfair that we were shuttled to on the first night in London due to a power outtage at our building, but that’s another story for another time) but those seem to have gotten loaded onto Spencer’s computer the other day and I can’t access them so they’ll have to wait. Posts, pics and updates shall just have to be like our life these days…all out of order.
For now, here are the shots from Hallowe’en in the Hotel

Not just 5 kids, and not exactly 5 kids all at the same time.

First, not exactly 5 kids, because in reality, at almost 16 (Spencer) and almost 17 (Jesse) are men in their own rights and can really take care of a lot of stuff that with little kids you have to worry about.  Although, what they can’t do any better, is anticipate what it’s going to be like to go through security at JFK, or Border Patrol in the UK.

Second, not just 5 kids…also 12 Checked bags and 5 or 6 pieces of carry on baggage.  Now, this doens’t seem like too much of a task, but seriously…when you’re MOVING to another country, and need to get to the airport, and are trying NOT to spend a bloody fortune…you take your biggest bags, and strap them to the roof of the van, and squeeze everything else into the boot, and under the feet, and between the seats…we looked like quite the bunch of hillbillies driving down the road from Carleton Place to Montreal in the pouring rain.

And, so, it begins…

All week, I’d been watching the weather.  The days had been so bright, and free of rain since we landed in Toronto, that I had almost convinced myself that the forecasts for rain on the weekend that we were going to be travelling would not come true.  Despite my doubts in the prowess of the Ottawa Valley Meteorologists, the forecast became more and more glum as the weekend approached, convincing me to prepare for the worst.

The worst, I expected would be for it to start off being nice, lulling me into a false sense of security, and then proceeding to pour for the 2nd half of the drive…the torential kind of pouring that one can find in the Ottawa valley, and along the St. Laurence river.  This being my fear, and not having any recourse once the worst happened, I stopped on Friday night at Canadian Tire and purchased a box of the biggest, strongest contractor trash bags I could find.

Saturday morning, we were up early and packed.  Tracy and I had all of the ‘rooftop’ suitcases with us, which was great, so I could get them wrapped in their bags (this process actually ended up being doubled since I had the bags) and strapped to the top, before going to get the kids.  This process was accomplished by about 7:15, and we headed to pick up the kids.

A quick stop at Tracy’s folk’s to gather Taija and Jesse, and then off to my mom’s for Spencer, Terran and Aidan and we were on the road (albeit 20 minutes late).  The rain had been ceaseless, but we were excited to finally be heading out on our big travel day.

We arrived at Montreal-Pierre Trudeau airport in plenty of time for our flight to JFK, and defrocked the bags at the car rental return place and were very pleased to find that they were completely dry, despite the biblical force deluge that had been falling on us.

We made our way in, and having already checked in, just needed to drop off our bags, and make our way through security. Afterwords, we decided we were going to get some food, and we enjoyed a ‘lovely’ meal at an airport restaurant and hurriedly found our gate.

We kind of arrived in a rush, as we were under the impression that the flight would have already been boarding by this time.  The gate agent was quick to tell us that our flight was delayed ‘indefinitely’ due to weather in New York.

Delayed!  I hadn’t counted that possibility in my plans.  Now, the three hours we were expected to wait at JFK wasn’t seeming like very much time at all, and as we thought about what that would mean to us, we had to face the very real possibility that our luggage may not arrive in England at the same time we did.

We found out through the gate agent, that we were actually in fairly good shape, since most other airlines had completely cancelled their flights.  We only had to wait about an hour for our plane to board, and clearance to be given to take off.

Arriving at JFK was a bit scary, since although ticketed together, we knew that the systems of Delta (our carrier from Montreal) and Virgin Atlantic weren’t connected, and we weren’t actually checked into the Virgin flight.  To further complicate matters, Delta operates their own terminal at JFK, which meant we had to somehow (without boarding passes) find our way to whereever Virgin Atlantic was loading up our plane!  Avoiding all of the ‘manned’ Delta counters, we wandered for about 5 minutes before spying two Delta employees who were having a lively chat, and convinced one of them to give us directions to the Virgin gates…so thankful that she did, ’cause we would never have guessed.

Finding our way on the terminal shuttle train to the check-in counter, we managed to (with the assistance of several of the Virgin employees) get checked in and our bags registered.  So my readers can get a feel for how close this was for us, our main assistant in this matter (Wyclef) had to keep radioing to his superiors to get them to ‘open’ the flight so he could add our bags as the system kept closing it. It was planned to be departing in less than an hour.

Since we were the last passengers allowed to check-in, Wyclef personally escorted us to the airport security section for this terminal, where we needed to go through the whole process once again.

We arrived at the gate, thinking we were just in time to board, only to learn that our flight wasn’t quite boarding yet due to a problem with a lock on one of the cargo doors.  Perfect!  Our luggage, which was being transferred by Delta, would have a chance to make it…and we weren’t late.  Time for a beer and some food at the gate-side cafe.

After about 45 minutes, Virgin announced that our flight was going to be cancelled and all of us moved onto one of their later flights (boarding in 45 minutes).  “Yippee!” we thought, since this would ensure that our luggage would have time to be transfered and arrive to the plane.  In truth, it actually took about 2 hours to get all the passengers sorted out, new boarding passes printed for all of us, and everyone loaded.

A couple of stories of herosim that need to be mentioned…

First, during the initial check-in with Virgin, my man Wyclef worked his magic to find seats together for all 7 of us…in addition to the problem with the flight closing, and personally escorting us to Security.

Second, when it came time for boarding this 747-400 (the biggest plane by far that any of us had ever been on) I decided to take advantage of the ‘pre-boarding’ call to give us a little extra time to get on the plane, get settled, and get our stuff to-do distributed between all of us.  In theory, this would have worked, but for the crush of people harrasing the gate agents trying to get boarded…once again, my man Wyclef remembered us from earlier in the evening, and stepped in, brought all 7 of us forward and got us boarded.

Finally seated, we were able to swap a couple of seats with a lovely couple from northern England so we could all be closer together than our boarding passes would allow.  We settled in to enjoy the service and digital seat-back entertainment during this long flight.  We hadn’t of course anticipated the 2 more hours of sitting while we waited for all the luggage and cargo to be transfered from the other plane.  It was clear that airports are not designed to have luggage transfered from one gate to the gate next-door.

Once we did manage to take off, the flight proceeded without a hitch. Meal service, drink service and breakfast all no problems.

The only hiccup was when we realized that some of the children had stayed up all ‘night’ with their seat-back entertainment, and proceeded to fall asleep as we began our descent into LHR.

Next up…Border Patrol, Customs and getting settled in our flat…

On Sunday we made the drive from Burlington/Hamilton/Stoney Creek to Smiths Falls.  We figured since we were moving to another continent, and sticking an ocean between ourselves and our nearest ancestors that we’d head over there during our move and spend some time visiting old haunts, and visiting with the relations.

Our week started off well, with a dinner at Rob Roy’s pub in Smiths Falls overlooking the Power Generation slipway.  My mom, Auntie Cher and Gab came down from Carleton Place, and Tracy’s mom joined us too, and we filled the back room with our little party.

The company was good, and after dinner, we actually managed to farm out all the kids…some to each grandmother.   Finding ourselves back at the Comfort Inn Smiths Falls (don’t even get me started) without childcare responsibility made Tracy and I rather untired, so we headed back to Rob Roy’s for a pint.  Like the die-hard locals we used to be, we headed up to the Lee Tavern after a bit, figuring on playing some pool and drinking some bad beers.

We got there and ended up playing pool with some old and new friends and stayed out way too late.

We basically spent the rest of the week shuttling back and forth between my moms and Tracy’s.

Monday morning we drove to Carleton Place, picked up the kids and returned to Smiths Falls for the afternoon and spent time with Tracy’s Folks and her Aunt and Uncle who had come to visit from Kingston. Monday night, back to Carleton Place with the Spencer, Terran and Aidan who were staying with my mom.

There we discovered the secret to helping Aidan have a good time sleeping over…spending time with our normal Bedtime routine became the crux of the previous night’s issue, and the secret to his happiness for the remainder of the week.

Tuesday morning, back to my mom’s, though this time Tracy’s Dad and I zipped passed to Almonte where we picked up Gramma Jenny, then stopped by to collect the kids on our way back to Smiths Falls so we could all visit there.  In the afternoon, we all headed over to my brother’s house for a shared birthday party for Aidan and his cousin Julie.  Aidan turns 8 and Julie 6 on the 12th, so we thought we’d celebrate together for the first time.

It was our first visit to their new home, and the kids had a wonderful time running around outside and visiting the sheep, horses and cats that call the farm their home.  Julie seemed to have fun with her ‘foreign’ cousins whom she’s only met one other time…and reports from her parents after-the-fact, had her declare that she’s glad she doesn’t have any other brothers and sisters…’cause that many kids all the time is tiring!

Wednesday was my Mom’s day…we collected Jesse and Taija early (9:30 am) and headed to my moms for the day.  We hung out there, played guitar, played Wii, and chatted for the bulk of the day.  Although we did have our secret mission of Breaking and Entering Grandma’s house for pictures to undertake, which went well.  Once they were sorted, we headed over to Auntie Cher’s to handle the scanning…Spencer and I worked together to get all the images digitized, so we could run a highlight reel on our family party on Friday.

Thursday we also spent in Carleton Place, and let the kids head over to spend their Walmart Gift Cards.  We had noticed a serious lack of a guitar stand at my mom’s, so we got one of those too, and let her instrument out of its case to get some air, and hopefully get played. I also found it strung with what appeared to be rubber strings the day before, so I restrung it to hold a tune.

Thursday night we headed out to a gathering of our friends at the Lee.  It was good to see all our friends again, and thanks a Huge bunch to Swammi for pulling them all together.  Sean and Cathy even swung by for a couple of Ceasars…seeing as we wouldn’t see them again ’till they manage to get themselves to England.

Friday morning, we headed to Carleton Place with the big kids in the morning, collected the little kids and an extra car…picked up lunch for the new surprise crew that had appeared at my auntie cher’s overnight, and spent a few hours visiting with my Auntie B and cousins Darwyn and Odessa who had just arrived from the west coast.
The party broke up and we were able to spend a couple more hours in Smiths Falls visiting with Gramma Cassell before the Moffatt party that evening.

In the evening, we headed to the Heritage Inn for an impromptu family reunion with the Moffatt Clan…Brenda and the Kids, Hope and Lainey had flown in…Grandma Moffat’s 88th birthday there was to celebrate, and we were moving to the UK…and really…let’s face, two or more Moffatts in a room, and we’re a party, and there were a lot of us.

The kids ran around, all the cousins had a go at the Pinata (although thanks to Blake, I was spared having to have a go at it).  It was a great time and perfect way to wrap up the week!

I’ll add some pics later once I find them, and of course Darwyn’s pics from his adventures.  The post about the actualy journey to London follows.

Saturday after we checked ourselves into our hotel in Burlington, we began a whirlwind tour of Southern Ontario.

Our good friend Deborah opened her home to us, and fed us the first home cooked meal we’d had in a week.  The little boys had a great time playing with their old friends Cassidy and Keaton…Terran even had a sleep-over, which he enjoyed very much despite being woken early to head to the farm in the morning.

We had a great time visiting with Deborah and Geoff, Lucy and Will during dinner, and catching up on the couple of years since we’d seen each other.  After dinner, Brian, Brian and Laura arrived with some of their crew so all the kids had a good visit with old friends, and we could catch up with all the goings on with our hold homeschool group and the friends we’ve left to hold down the fort.

Taking full advantage of the time change, we didn’t wrap up the evening until about 11:30, and then made our way back to the hotel in Burlington for a good night’s sleep in yet another hotel.  Two rooms in this one as well, and our first experience without adjoining rooms.  We put the big boys in one room, and since we were minus Terran, Aidan just crawled in with us while Taija took the pull out.

Up early again and off to the farm for breakfast, with a quick stop to pick up Terran at the Smith’s.

It was great being at the farm again and seeing the progress that has been made on the upstairs living quarters.

The back-story:

In the spring of 2001, we sold pretty much everything that we owned and moved onto a 72 passenger school bus with the kids.  Our friends Monique and Byron, who were in the middle of their own remodel welcomed us onto their property and we all camped out together for the duration of the summer.

Back to the present time:

Their remodel included renovating their barn into living space, and after 7 years, it is finally a living space, with many elements complete, and like any expression of creativity, an ongoing passion of Byrons.

Listen to Byron tell the stories of creating this space for his family was a morning well spent, and we had a grand time in the kitchen together again after all these years.

All the kids’ friends were there or showed up to spend some time catching up with them before we headed off to spend a week in Smiths Falls and Carleton Place.

At about 1pm, we wrapped up this party, and piled into the van, under brilliant blue sky, for the 4 and a half hour drive to our old home town.

Let’s quickly catch up a bit…

Halloween was a pretty crazy day at the house and hotel.  The previous day went well, and Matt and the rest of the guys from the moving company got us all packed into our 40 foot shipping container in record time.

We spent the remainder of the evening cleaning, painting and escorting Danny and Lynn around the house on their cursory inspection tour.

Friday morning, I was up before the crack of dawn painting the bathroom cabinets upstairs, which although still white, had been painted when we did the bathroom in order to cover up some marks.  I finished up the work at the house around 10:30 am, and swung out to drop off the Comcast equipment, the Rug Doctor shampooer and then headed out to a consignment lot near the airport to arrange to have the van sold while we’re in the UK.

After arranging that, I was off to the airport in a cab to pick-up the rental car we would use until we dropped it off at the airport the following morning.

Taija, Terran, Aidan, Tracy and I headed out to the Harrison’s for a bit of a Halloween party on Friday evening.  We had a great time playing pool, and eating junk-food.  The kids had a great time trick-or-treating for the last time and still have pounds of candy to eat their way through.

We ended up getting back to our hotel around 10pm, and met the big boys returning from their friend’s house. I took a pile of US Currency over to the bank and deposited it…figuring I didn’t need to be carrying around cash that would be hard to use.

After what seemed like hardly any time to sleep, we were up again at 4:30 to get dressed and make our way to the airport for our 8am flight to Toronto.  It took us about an hour to get on the road, and although this was eating into my buffer, seemed okay though as we were making good time.

That was until, approaching the 516 off-ramp, I noticed the flashing lights of emergency vehicles on BOTH sides of the freeway.  Did we ever grind to a halt as the road narrowed from 5 lanes to 1 at that point due to some idiot crashing his car into the left hand guardrail and then careened over onto the right-hand shoulder leaving car parts across all lanes of traffic.  Luckily, this happened just before we arrived on the scene, and we were only delayed a further 10-15 minutes.

Once we arrived, checking in went off without a hitch…although aparently the United Airlines personnel have over automated the check-in system…with plenty of self-serve kiosks available, there were not enough staff to tell people standing in our long line, that there were kiosks at the other end.  I of course, took it upon myself to holler down the line at the people in front to let them know, and once that happened we were moving again.

Our Toronto based Air Canada crew served us well, and got us to Toronto on schedule.  The luggage, as expected went onto the top of our 2008 Pontiac Montana and we managed to have bright sun, blue sky and 1 degree weather.

That’s about it for this post…coming up next, Dinner with the Smiths & Erskines and Brunch at the farm.

Things have been so crazy getting ready the past couple of weeks that I haven’t had time to check in and post about what is going on.

I’m posting from our hotel room in Federal Way while the little 3 and poppa are down enjoying the small but empty pool. Yesterday the movers arrive to start packing so we’re well into the thick of things today. The bigs are spending the next 3 days with friends so they’re not stuck squished in the hotel rooms with us. They’ll join us again after Hallowe’en fun with Alex and Peter and then after a wee bit of sleep be off to the airport with all of us on at dawn on Saturday morning.

The big stuff that happened this week:

1. Luna and Cloudkit found a new home! This was the biggest stress for me. I just couldn’t imagine what we’d do if we couldn’t find a new home for them. I posted to every homeschool list I was on as well as Craigslist and even enlisted friends to post to everyone they knew for me but to no avail. Last week our wonderful friend, Helen came to the rescue and posted to her homeschool lists for us. I’m not sure what promises she made or what enticing things she said about our furry friends but it worked. On Saturday Luna and her boy went to their new wonderful home up north. There were plenty of tears but we were very relieved to send them off with their new family. We’ll miss them so much. It was wonderful to have them with us and so special to have the experience of watching Luna give birth ( mental note to clean the carpet in our closet when we have the carpet cleaner.

Sweet mamma Luna

Sweet Cloudy Kitten all grown up

The Kitten pile...one of those little guys is Cloudkit.

2. Dave’s car sold! Yippee Yahooo!! That’s all I need to say about that except perhaps FOR SALE 2006 Ford Econoline Van- 12 passengers- great shape ( aka The BeastieVan) for the low, low price of just $12,750! ( yuppo, you guessed it. We’ve still got the van. I would really, really like to see it sell before we go but on the upside it came in very handy today when we took a huge load of trash to the dump and another to donate at the charity shop.

3. As previously mentioned, the movers arrived yesterday morning to start packing. I’m always amazed at how fast and efficient and friendly the crew is. They returned this morning to pack and start loading and tomorrow they’ll finish up.

Here’s a little photographic documentation of our week…enjoy!

We’re down to the final push and excitement is building. Movers arrive to start packing on Oct 28 which gives us only 14 days to do all the things left on our list including finishing up the painting. We’re down to only ONE room and 2 stairways to paint so by the weekend it should be over and everything should be moved back into the proper rooms.
The benefit of all this painting is that we’ve cleaned and purged as we went along which means no creepy dust bunnies and icky things found lurking behind kids’ beds when the movers come to pack. We’ve already found and eliminated all of those as we went along!

I’m still looking for homes for Luna and Cloudy but I’m positive that the right home will come through for them this week. Those vehicles still need a new owner as well so if you’re looking for a 12 passenger van give us a holler.

I’m still looking at houses in London pretty much every day, just scoping it out, familiarizing myself with areas and really solidifying in my mind what it is we want so that my vision of our dream house is clear and I can focus on making it happen.

We have our temporary housing set up. The company is renting us two 2 bedroom apartments at Europa House in Westminster so yes, that means that Taija, Spence and Jess get their own posh flat in a lovely area of London. Movin’ on up, indeed!

We did some quick calculating and discovered that we’ll be moving into our new home on or around Dec 21. Hopefully our stuff will have arrived by then but there is always the chance that we’ll be moving into an empty house! We discussed options and decided that rather than try to do Christmas in an empty house or a house full of boxes we’re going on a Christmas Vacation! All the kids seem to have a different idea about where they’d like to go. Germany and France seem to be the leading contenders right now ( although I think someone suggested Switzerland as well). What it will come down to is where we can find a good furnished vacation rental for the week at a good price that we can get to easily. We may end up in Ireland or Wales. I’ll be happy with anything… a Christmas vacation in Europe with my super fab family. Man, life is so good!!

That’s all the boring news for now. I am so eagerly looking forward to being done with the ‘work’ and onto the fun and adventure. It will be so good to be back in the old Country for a little while to see and hug family and friends, I am counting the days.

We decided to let the kitties go. We will miss them but it was the right choice because it is best for the kitties. Today Avalon went to a great new home. She will be living on a farm where she can roam around and catch mice. We met Daphne today, she is the woman who owns the farm. She breeds and raises Siberian cats , they are nice. Here is the farm where she is going. Brindle Farms.

Here is Avalon. We feel sad for the kitties going and we’ll miss them. We feel good about Avalon’s new home though.

Our sweet Kitty Avalon

from Aidan aka Robobeo

Like the advanced team, I headed over to the Department of Homeland Security office in Tukwila, WA two days ahead of my family.

What I found out is that the ‘appointments’ that all visitors to the “Application Support Center” receive are to try and stage the influx of want-to-be americans from all showing up at the same time. Once you arrive at the office, and pass the security screening (like your typical airport security check) the nice man behind the desk gives you a number…and then we proceed with the standard, government beurocracy ‘first come, first served’ method of serving, dare I say, customers.

My bioscan proceeded without incident, and I was able to gather enough information to effectively prepare my children for the experience. We had been given 3 separate appointment times for the six remaining members of the household.

Working on the knowledge that we would all be assigned the next six numbers out of the machine, we arrived at the facility in time for our ‘appointment’ to find a huge queue of people. Apparently the xray machine was on the fritz, and all of us had to manually searched. Wallets, and portfolios needed to be searched.

Having our expectations met, we waited for the first number to be called. Tracy went up first, and asked for enough forms for all the rest of the kids so I could get a head start in filling them out. That went very well. Tracy and the two little boys going up to turn theirs in together, while I worked on the other three. I had each prepared in time for the next kid to get to the counter by the time the preceeding kid was finishing up.

Once all that was done, we made our way into the inner sanctum of application support, and armed with yet another number, I was encouraged by the fact that there were almost as many scan operators as there are us. My good feelings were shortlived however, when despite my best intentions, one of the well meaning operators dumped our entire stack of paperwork on a single desk. I mean, come on people! How hard is this? You give everyone numbers…why not just go with it? I’m sure the answer to that question goes something like, “I’m sorry Mr. Coons. We’re the US Government. We will not be efficient, no matter how hard you try.”

At one point there were 3 operators sitting around looking for people to scan, but not one time did anyone even think of taking a couple of the forms from the one guy who was helping us. Sheesh guys!

Anyway, that’s done, and everything sent off to the British Consulate in LA. Now, our attention turns full time to painting, selling our cars and appliances.