The Car Seat Question

One of the most common questions we have gotten about our trip is about the car seat situation for the kids. The short answer is we are taking all 3 of them....yeah.  Can you rent them in England?  Probably.  Are they the best quality?  Probably not.  Does Airbus pay for the rental of car seats from the rental car company?  Nope.  So with these things considered and the fact that I am not willing to chance my kiddos lives on rental car car seats for 3 months (or 3 seconds for that matter) we set out to find the easiest way to go about taking said car seats. 

This search lead us to what is quite possibly my favorite purchase we have made for this trip yet.  Feast your eyes on this bad boy....

So cool...right?  Sorry to all of you seasoned travelers who already knew about these.  Please forgive my ignorance in the art of traveling with children.  







We will be using these to check Leah and Dylan's car seats.  We will be gate checking Grant's so that we can use it and the stroller that goes with it to run through airports and such while catching connecting flights. Also in hope (but not holding our breath) that there might be an open seat that they will let us use for Grant (we did not purchase a plane seat for him), in which case we can use his car seat on the plane. 

Any and all advice on traveling with a 5 year old, 3 year old, and 7 month old from those more experienced with this sort of thing is always welcome!  Thanks in advance! 

Today was a busy day of canceling memberships and subscriptions to things we will not be using while we are gone.  It was also a pretty exciting day for the kiddos.  Leah and Dylan's new luggage arrived and we finally got the all of the kids passports in the mail!  YAY!!!! 

                                                          31 days and counting!!!! 

Be a traveler, not a tourist

I know to most of you it will come as no surprise that I often allow stress to consume me.  We have known for over a year now that we were probably going to be traveling to the UK at some point in the near future.  Any normal person would initially be overwhelmed with excitement and joy about receiving such an amazing opportunity.  My initial feelings were, however, sheer-all-consuming panic and stress.  Had this opportunity presented itself 7 years ago as a young couple without kiddos I would have felt the way a "normal person" would, but the first thing I thought of was sitting on a plane for 8 hours with a 5 year old, 3 year old, and 6 month old, not to mention the expenses involved, etc, etc. 

As we have managed to iron out more of the details of this trip I am admittedly feeling slightly more at ease.  I know once we actually arrive at our 3 bedroom flat in Bristol I will be able to breath a HUGE sigh of relief and settle into our temporary British life.  Until then, as I admitted to my husband today, I cannot promise a "melt down free" time.  By the way, my husband deserves some serious props for putting up with me in my crazy moments.  After nearly 15 years of togetherness he knows me so well and, despite that, he still wants me to go to England with him.  Love you sweetie!!!

All that being said, I know that ultimately, I just want to be together and do my best to make memories with my sweet little family with out stressing about every little thing.  It's totally clique, but Nathan and I have always said as long as we are together everything else will workout.  By the grace of God it always does!

Personal goals for this England Adventure:
1.  Let go and let God  (Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.  Psalm 55:22)
2.  Make memories
3.  To be a traveler, not a tourist

Blog Introduction

Welcome to our blog!  I must warn you I am hardly what I would call a "writer."  I apologize in advance for the poor grammar, spelling, and/or punctuation that is likely to ensue.  The purpose of this blog will be to journal our adventures in England, and to provide a way for our family and friends to keep up with us along the way.  Stay tuned for some fun posts about our preparations for our trip which I have aptly named our "England Adventure," because clearly, when you have two high school sweethearts from a small town in the mid-west traveling internationally with three kiddos under the age of six, every part of this trip is bound to be an adventure, right?