Sunday October 18th, Nottingham

There are so many people we would love to have seen whilst we were in England but unfortunately, time just wasn’t on our side. We had decided that this time, we’d limit ourselves to two different sleep sites, thereby eliminating the need to unpack and repack constantly. It worked out very well, we never felt too stressed or rushed but it certainly limited us on how many people we were able to catch up with.

Leaving Mum and Dad was extremely tough, although we’d got quite a lot achieved, we would love to have been able to do more for them. It was hard leaving too, knowing that we will likely not see them for over a year. Once again, thank goodness for the internet and all that it brings in the form of webcams and easy, cheap, conversations.

We stopped at Paula and Daniel’s for a delicious lunch, their ‘baby’ certainly no longer a baby, he and Nathan had a lot of fun playing together. Rachel and Jim also brought their two girls over so we had quite a crowd, noise levels were raised! It was wonderful chatting with the girls and catching up, although we only see each other once every couple of years, there’s never a problem picking up from where we left off – I’m sure the boys will attest to that!

Our dinner stop was with Andrea and John, we got to cuddle their gorgeous new Grandson before he went home, always a bonus! As always, they create such a relaxing environment to chill out in, it’s very difficult to leave. We had to tear the kids away from the wii and a movie with nothing but the enticement of a 2 hour drive home – woohoo! We got onto the M6 at 10:45pm and bam!: bumper to bumper traffic, not so good. Thankfully Dave chose the ‘good’ lane and we were able to merge nicely back into the single file of traffic after 20 minutes, had the potential to be a lot worse, we were much relieved.

So, back in Timperley: another late night and needless to say, school the next morning was not a pretty experience. I know, we bring it on ourselves!