Well, we're here!

Let me see . . . depending on when you start counting, we traveled, without stopping, about 32 hours.  It was because our flight was delayed from Tallahassee -- we missed the one flight to Manchester.  And, as I may have mentioned, London is NO WHERE NEAR North Yorkshire.  So it was the tube in London (no, we didn't see anything interesting) -- the tube is, as the name suggests, underground.

The kids did an awesome job on the long flight.  They did their best to sleep on a full coach flight, but I got no sleep whatsoever.

I went to A GREAT DEAL OF TROUBLE to research luggage (for four people!) and I selected an obscure version of a High sierra combo back-pack-carry-on-rolling-bag that was *just* the right size and shape for everyone -- and I packed CARRY-ON (that is, I had to make TOUGH CHOICES!  I brought fuzzy socks instead of slippers because then I could bring my travel-sized flat iron!)  But because I had refused to get on the plane until I was reasonably sure that I wouldn't end up in London with three kids and NO INTERPRETER, there was no where IN the cabin for our bags -- and the kind stewardess (ahem, "Flight Attendant" now, isn't it?) snatched out bags and CHECKED THEM -- GAH!  If I wanted to CHECK BAGS, i would have packed BIG, BAD-ASS ones!  Wah!

But while we were in the VERY LONG, VERY SLOW immigration line with the Russians & Tunisians & Indians & Swedes, John collected these bags which we then proceeded to drag around all of England -- and their train platforms involve STAIRS!  Plan for that, I tell you!

At Heathrow, there were vending machines dedicated to Cadbury chocolates, and Isaac hit upon the idea of doing a survey of as many differnt kinds of Cadbury cholocates as possible.  So far he's had something called "Crunchy," and Mara's had something called "Buttons."  I really like the milk chocolate because it tastes just like the creme eggs that we get around Easter, but without the creme.  I bet the caramel is just like the caramel eggs . . . but I best not try it.

We are at John's "mum's" (Isaac said he should now call me "mum") but the sad part was that it got PITCH-BLACK dark at about 5 p.m. so we saw none of the countryside while we traversed it -- across the Pennines -- to "Cleveland" (which, I think, is a "county").

Today the schedule is "sheep" which Reesa is very excited about.