A Southern Girl's Guide To Life: A Right Royal Monday!

Not a great picture, but Bath, by the River Avon, September 2002

It's so fitting that in this day of deployment, I've found on ABC a 20/20 episode on the Royal Family of Britain. Now, anyone who knows anything about me and the fam, know that Britain, and specifically London, is our second home. Having lived there for a few days shy of 25 months, I can unoquivocally say that place has a special place in my heart like none other. Here's a few things that happened to us in our London:

1. Devyn, at 21 months, hailed a cab on Baker Street. From her stroller. On the way to see the Queen's Golden Jubilee Parade.

2. We were robbed in the middle of the night while we slept.

3. We fell in LOVE with fresh cod and chips, our most favorite being from Seashell of Lisson Grove Fish and Chips, one street over from where we lived. If you want to check it out, you can find it at: http://www.seashellrestaurant.co.uk/history.aspx. It's truly incredible stuff.

4. Mike sat directly behind Prince Charles and Princes William and Harry while at St.Paul's Cathedral for the one-year anniversary service of 9/11. And did NOT bring William home to me. Huh. Something about him (Mike) being in uniform and possibly going to prison.

5. I stood 4 feet from Princess Anne at Royal Ascot Race Course when Mike and I went. A once in a lifetime event, but seriously overpriced. However, the one bet I made, I came out $8.00 richer! Small victories, you know?

6. Our precious, sweet Aiden was born at 10:13

am, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) at the Portland Hospital for Women and Children on Great Portland Street, London, by one Mr. Charles Wright. Yes, Mister. Surgical physicians go by Mister. Teaching dr's go by Professor, GPs, or General Practitioners, by Doctor. I will honestly never have another baby unless it's at the Portland. It was downright amazing.

7. Devyn loved feeding the ducks (as did Mike and I) at the Boating Lake in Regent's Park. That place will always, always have my heart. It's the one place that reminded me of home when we first arrived and I was so very sad, and the place that brought me the greatest sadness when we were leaving after 2 years.

8. It's where we made the most wonderful friends--my Amber, our David and Emma, Devyn's preschool teachers like Shabana and Hema and her first two little friends, Lois and Tabitha.--all our Brits who are so very important to us, and the American friends we made there who thankfully have all stayed in our lives in such a special way.

8. It was on a bus at 10:30 pm, travelling through Kensington that Mike and I made a promise to each other in April, 2002, when we first visited to scout it out (we'd be arriving a short three weeks later for good) that we would do everything we could to make it that we could come back every five years. We want Aiden to be familiar with his homeland (and it really is--he's got a British birth certificate!), and we want Devyn to always have that constant memory of the first place she remembers as home. And Mike and I want always to have that place that is so dear to us in our hearts...the place that brought us together as a couple and as a family.

Sweet Baby Boy, May 2004, looking out at his London, and specifically the trains at Marylebone Train Station, next to our aparment building.

With that promise comes the reality that we are travelling back a little earlier than expected, by God's grace. We'll be arriving in London the Monday before Thanksgiving this year, and we'll be able to stay a week. We are SO excited! I can't wait to visit our church, to see our lovely friends, to take Devyn to her first school, to sit in Regents Park no MATTER how cold it is, to take the kids to Harrod's to see Father Christmas, to do all the things that make it London, and Home, in a sense for

us. I can't WAIT to just be us in London again, the way we did then.