England

At the end of October we took a trip down to the south of England to visit our friends Michael, Julia, Naomi and Eliza DeLashmutt. You may remember them from previous posts but just to remind you... they are the family we were close to in Aberdeen who then moved to Seattle and we stayed with them last year when we were visiting the States. Well, Michael just got a job down in Cornwall, England so we went to visit them and see that part of the country. They just had their baby girl, Eliza, 4 days before Ainsley was born so it was fun to have the babies around each other and compare developmental stages, etc. The trip started out with Ainsley's very first flight, to London, which she did wonderful on! Michael and Julia drove up to London to pick us up (it's a 5 or 6 hour drive) in two separate cars. Andy and Michael then continued North to Glasgow (8 more hours of driving) to pick up items the DeLashmutt's had in storage there while Julia, the girls and I stayed the night in Oxford before heading down south the next day. The first couple days were very long (for Andy especially) but eventually we all arrived safely in Falmouth (the actual town they live in). We pretty much spent the week helping the DeLashmutt's move into and get settled in their new place. That part of the country is very beautiful but, apart from the last day we were there, unfortunately, we didn't really see much of it. That was a bit disappointing but we enjoyed being with good friends none the less. On the day we were scheduled to leave Andy and I rented a car and left early enough in the morning so that we could stop a couple places along the way. The first place we stopped was Salisbury (to see the beautiful Cathedral, not to eat a steak). If we'd realized what a great town that was we would have planned to spend more time there but oh well! Then, off we went to Stonehenge which was pretty amazing as well. We didn't have much time there except to see it and take a few pictures because we needed to get to London to catch our flight. We were doing well for time until we hit London during rush hour and it was all over from there. Picture this: we're already feeling a little stressed because we know we're cutting it close to return the rental car and catch our flight and Ainsley starts to get fussy. I check to make sure she's not too hot but instead find that she's blown out through all her clothes. We can't stop though because we might miss our flight so I just take her out and try to change her on the seat of the car. She's screaming and squirming, I'm sweating and Andy's trying to stay focused on the road. It was not one of the finer moments of the Odle family if I do say so myself. But, I did get her changed and we did get to the airport eventually. We missed our flight though and had to stay in a hotel but we got home the next morning. Oh the joys!