Meredith Carson... Across the Pond and Back Again...

I can remember the exact moment it hit me.   I was sitting on the rubbery play surface at our local outdoor playground on an unusually warm and sunny British afternoon.   My young children were playing some sort of imaginative game that required them to gather pebbles, dandelions, and blades of grass which they spun furiously in the gravity bowl while they chattered back and forth in high pitched voices with elfin British accents.   The sky was blue and a jolly red post box stood in my line of sight as I gazed across Llantrisant Road.   On the opposite side of the street, there were vibrant, verdant hills dotted with sheep and sluggish, grazing cattle. Right then the notion hit me like a stepped upon pitch fork hits a stooge between the eyes.   We would eventually move back to the USA, and, when we did, I would feel homesickness for Great Britain in the same way that I yearned for my American home while living abroad.   I would forever be torn betwe...

Last year the kids were seriously displeased when we weren't able to go to our local Midland County Fair.  Having grown up in the UK, they had never been to a county fair, and they were feeling extremely deprived.  We knew this year, even though we were still recovering from a long weekend away in Kentucky, we would have to suck it up and take them out there.  I think we managed to tick all of the boxes. Ooh-ing an Ahh-ing at livestock? Check. Indulging in some healthy fair food? It's no deep-fried stick of butter, but still... Check. Sitting astride a giant pachyderm? Why yes, as a matter of fact, we did that too. How about spending twenty American dollars to ride a giant Ferris wheel? Check. Double check. And finally... giving coins to the creepy and rather sad Capuchin monkey. Check, please.

America is seeping into my veins.  It is starting to feel like home again.  I vacillate between excitement over all of the American-ness that is around me and the desire to hold a lot of that American-ness at arms length and ponder it with a bit of skepticism.  While in the UK, I thought I missed all of the cheerful, sparkly American goodies and doo-dahs.  Now that I'm back, I examine said goodies with a very critical eye and ask ridiculously serious questions like: "How many calories/ artificial ingredients/ saturated, partially hydrogenated fats are in this thing?"  "Was this cute-as-can-be dingleberry painted in a horrible third world sweatshop with toxic led paint?"   "Is there anything in this store that was not made in China?"  "Is this packaging recyclable?" or "Is this entire thing going to end up in a landfill when I'm finished with it?" These questions tend to take the fun out of a shopping experience.  Ignorance ...

Our first "Fourth" back in the States in pictures... Riley and Sophie make the blue Gatorade moustaches work! Food cooked outside just tastes better.  Right, guys? Nice Arm Candy, George. Lili of the Lake Seaweed... or is that Lakeweed... is an excellent source of fiber. Big Project Quality Time With Dad This eventually became something huge.  I'm not exactly sure what it was, but it was big. HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!! If I'm too tired to stay up for the fireworks tonight, does that mean I've done something right?

I climbed into my bed back here in Wales with a sleeping Lili at 3 o'clock this morning.  We had a successful house hunting trip to Michigan and are now feeling like we will be ready to "do this" when summer rolls around...soon!  We found a great house just outside the city.  It has lots of woods and a firepit out back.  This means you can come over and make s'mores if you want to. I don't have any photos of the house since we weren't exactly sure which house would be "the one" until we left Michigan.  We were negotiating with two different sellers, which put us in a pretty favorable position.  When I'm able to get pics, I will share. To break up the trip a bit for our littlest one, we stopped for the night in Dulles on the way in and out.  This means that before we returned to the UK, we were able to spend the day with everyone's favourite uncle, David.  We also got to enjoy a lot of sunshine.  (Let's just not discuss the ...