Kick your knees up step in time!

I made it back to England!
My flight left from LAX at 430pm on Monday and arrived in London Heathrow around 11am Tuesday morning. The last few days prior to my flight, I have to admit, I was nervous. You may be wondering whether or not I had cold feet, and the answer is an honest yes. I can't stress how easy it was to get back into a comfortable routine when I was home. I was around my family, my friends, my interests. I learned how to play racquetball in last few months and have been totally hooked since. For my entire life up until this point, I have been a free and independent woman. The world has been my oyster, and I've done what I wanted without having to think twice. Yes, getting onto a plane that took me across the world to settle for the next two years was scary. Change is scary, and I felt that more in the past few days than I ever had before. Anticipation, fear, excitement, overwhelming anxiety, too many mixed emotions all at once. The thing is, I knew this day was coming. The problem was that it felt so far away, and it started to feel totally surreal as it got closer. I had been comparing it to a cliff jump I did at the river a few weeks ago. I watched everyone else conquer it, and I wasn't too afraid to try it myself since it didn't look so big from inside the boat. It was during the hike to the top that my stomach started to flutter. Then, standing at the top and looking down was terrifying and it hit me. I almost couldn't jump. My thoughts and emotions almost got the best of me, but I had to let go of everything and just go for it.
My feelings towards leaving were very similar. It was so far away, that I didn't need to worry about it until it got closer. The same thing happened, thoughts, emotions and fear entered my mind, but I had to let it all go and JUMP. And that's exactly what I did :-)

In case this wasn't a totally obvious statement, moving is expensive. Especially when it's international. I had shipped 6 boxes to Peter through Fed Ex, since I had a friend who worked for them. He let me use his 75% off discount, so, like anyone else might think, I thought, "I'll just ship everything!!!!" Wrong. These 6 boxes, which aren't even that big, came out to cost me nearly $400. This means, without that discount....they would have been close to $1,200. Ridiculous. On top of that, I thought, "Well, now I only have clothes left!" And it started with me bringing only one luggage. Wrong again. It turned out I needed two luggages for my clothes and those turned out to be over the weight limit of 50 pounds, so they were $50 extra...EACH! Right now, I can't imagine doing this again and shipping everything back to San Diego should we move back in a few years. But I guess we'll see where life takes us.

In the meantime, my flight was great. Direct flights are definitely the way to go. It turned out that Heather Locklear was on my flight. Dad recognized her as she went through security and she took a picture with us :-) I only know her from an episode of Scrubs. That was kind of exciting. I sat next to a really cool couple who I think were drunk the entire flight. I wasn't able to sleep as much as I would have liked to--it's painfully awkward to sleep in such a cramped space. I traveled with Air New Zealand, and although Peter had been really impressed by them, I have to say that I think I like Virgin Atlantic more. Although, they had a great selection of movies. The first movie I watched was Tangled--which is now my new favorite movie! Then I watched Lost in Translation and a few others that I think I must have actually fallen asleep through.

Getting through immigration this time was a piece of cake and I didn't have a single ounce of worry :-)

The officer simply asked a few questions like, "Will this be your first time living in the UK? Is your husband traveling with you? When did you get married?...Thank you!" Beautiful, what a relief among other things. 

My boy was there waiting for me just outside the gates and it was great to finally see him again (duh!). We got all my luggage back to the car and decided to have brunch in Windsor, since it was close by and on the way to our hotel! It was a much better alternative to London since it was hot out and I was exhausted. We stopped at a cute little Greek restaurant and sat outside and literally marveled at the fact that we were back in each others presence. Then it was off to our HOTEL!! I must say, this hotel is stunning. Our room wasn't anything special, but that's okay. It reminded me a lot of the Hotel Del because of it's age, the creakiness of the floors, and how confusing it was finding our room (every time!!) After I took a short nap, we went to the bar for food and drinks. It took us a while but we finally decided to share a salad. Forty five minutes later, we asked where our salad was and found out that they'd run out of one of the main ingredients. So we cancelled our order and Peter went to the grocery store around the corner instead. I was taking a bath when he came back with a sandwich, sushi, fruit and a chocolate bar for dessert. He sat in the bathroom with me and we ate while listening to music--it couldn't have been a more perfect night together! The next morning we took full advantage of the complimentary breakfast and then we were off to play racquetball! The courts are actually squash courts, so it was a bit frustrating for me since they're 8 feet shorter and have ridges along every wall and beams at the ceilings. Either way, we both loved it and now Peter claims that he's hooked :-)

Later the same day, we had two flat viewings. One in Boughton Under-Blean, a little village just on the outskirts of Canterbury, and the other was one we had almost said yes to, just up the main road in Canterbury. Both of them are £750, but after seeing the size of the first one (in the small village), nothing would ever compare. The size and proportion was perfect, and to me, worth being a few minutes away from Canterbury. It's so crazy the difference in size that you have to sacrifice for location. So since the place in Boughton was a two bedroom, we have asked Peter's roommate JP if he'd like to join us, and he's said yes after seeing it today!! The agency called us yesterday to let us know that there were a few people interested and asked if we wanted to give them our information to be considered as well. So we did, and the land lord chose us!!! JP saw the place this afternoon and I am pretty sure I witnessed his jaw hit the floor when he saw the size. A very good sign. It's also about two minutes from the golf course which is perfect!! I'll leave it here with that bit of good news, and until next time....

Sneak Peek of the Place!

Honeymoon

Peter & I hadn't quite planned a honeymoon only because we figured we would just enjoy our time together in San Diego, and also because his friends and family would still be in town a few days after the wedding. The day after the wedding we went to the zoo and enjoyed a full day there, then later went to my favorite sushi restaurant e v e r...Osaka! I am pretty sure they all loved it and finally understood my bitterness towards England's lack of it ;-)

The next day we spent golfing with my dad. Cat and I didn't golf, so we took advantage of driving the golf carts. I brought our leftover champagne with some juice, so we had a few mimosas as we drove around...woops! It turned out to be a lot of fun & we ended the night at Hodads!

Once everyone had left, Peter and I picked up our rental car and were soon on our way to Utah! Since I don't have my own car anymore, I was really looking forward to the long drive.  Our car was so good on gas too--which was such a nice break from the truck. Soon we were driving through Vegas and the look on Peter's face was totally priceless! He was not impressed at all. We had talked about possibly staying there a night on our way back just for the heck of it, but there went that idea after he saw it! Once we got into Utah and arrived at our freeway exit, our directions to the time share weren't great. We spent a while lost and confused trying to find our way, and by this time we were starving! We finally found it, checked in, dropped off our stuff, and then headed back to the main street for a little food shopping. We got enough food to last us the next few days, however....we couldn't find wine anywhere to go with our dinner. I had been so excited to finally drink some wine since I'd been driving everyone around for a while. I had thought about bringing wine with us, but I figured we would pick up a bottle once we got into Utah. WRONG! I forgot how crazy Utah is. So we asked the locals about any liquor stores close by and found out there was one reasonably close. Again, we got lost. Really we just  didn't go far enough, but found it in just enough time for it to be open another ten minutes (of course they also closed really early). What a relief to finally get back and eat, drink, and rest up for Zion the next day.

Our first day in Zion was spent mostly driving through and sight seeing. We'd gotten out a bit too late to start hiking, and because we went in spring time, the Narrows were closed off. It was nice to finally feel relaxed and just enjoy our surroundings. The next day was our hike. The hike we chose is called Angel's Landing. It was fabulous! It was the perfect weather and the perfect balance of difficulty for us. The view at the top is amazing. Peter and I had a nice lunch packed for the top and spent some time taking in the view.

Next on the agenda was to give Bryce Canyon a visit. I'd been before with my family, and remembered it being spectacular and well worth the drive. I think round trip from where we were staying was about 4 hours. On the way to Bryce, both Peter and I had trouble staying awake, and we were both unaware that it was happening to each other. I finally pulled over at a gas station to announce that I was having trouble keeping my eyes open only to find out that he was too!! The funniest thing happened during our drive: I noticed all of the cars in front of me start to really slow down and I wondered why? Then I looked to the left and noticed a Police car--a jeep, pulled over to the side of the road obviously just watching traffic. But when we drove by....there was a dummy in the driver's seat with it's head turned sideways!! Clever. It worked! We definitely got a nice laugh out of it.

Bryce Canyon was just as I remembered it to be: stunning. The view is breathtaking. We drove up to Bryce point for the best view, but it was freezing! So we didn't stay as long as we would have liked, but got out for some pictures since we made the trip out! We stopped at almost every view point to see all the different sides, and it was during this time that something really horrible happened. Peter's brand new -digital SLR ran out of memory. So I thought, "I'll just re-size the images from large to medium since it always works on my camera!" Just a little bit of advice if you think you know a brand new camera; you probably don't, so you probably shouldn't mess with anything before reading the manual. Needless to say, I ended up deleting ALL of our pictures. Which basically included everything from the wedding up until that point. I still cannot believe this happened. So...we went back and tried to take all of our pictures over again :-) At least we got our money's worth? The drive back to our time share was especially memorable because we played this game where you choose a category (e.g. movies) and go through each letter of the alphabet naming a movie with that letter. We did this with a bunch of categories and it made our drive so much fun and go by a lot quicker (and we stayed awake!). When we got back, we quickly picked up some dinner, rented a movie and headed back to eat and relax. Overall, everything was perfect.

Wedding Night!

Near the end of our wedding, my friend Jessica asked me where Peter and I were staying that night. We hadn't really planned anything and would have been happy to stay at home, but she wasn't very happy with that answer, so she decided to book us a hotel room! So nice of her! After the wedding I still had to drop everyone off in OB (still don't know how I managed to drive--I'd only gotten 1.5 hours of sleep the previous night!) Once we got home, I had to take a nap, especially if we were meeting up with our friends later, which we were. We were to meet everyone at Shout House at 8 pm. It was a Sunday night, so downtown wasn't too crazy, but we ended up parking in the hotel parking lot (or so we thought anyway!) and walking to Shout House. We made it there a little late since it was so hard for me to wake up and get ready, but still had such a great night, nonetheless! I have to say, I have some of the best friends around, and I'm so thankful that everyone came to San Diego from England & Seattle!! :-) 

Jessica ended up putting Peter & my name up on the pianos, so not long after we'd arrived we were already being called up to the stage! We wanted the Brits to experience being on stage too, so Jessica made sure that happened, and it was so much fun! A perfect ending to such a good day, and surrounded by amazing people.

After Shout House, we were off to our hotel room at the Westin! Jessica had our key, so we weren't able to see it before Shout House. As we took the elevator up to our floor and approached our room at the end of the aisle, we saw a single rose on our door handle :-) We walked into our amazing room and here is what we saw:

Champagne, rose petals, roses, a huge bed and...lingerie. It was so sweet!! My only regret about this night--to make it more wedding night-esque--was to have gotten more sleep so I didn't want to immediately pass out.  We each poured a glass of champagne (only to have one sip!) and didn't stay up very much longer, since we'd gotten back so late from our night out. But we did absolutely love that bed. It was so big that we waved to each other from each end :-) The next morning we woke up pretty early since we had to take the speakers back and meet the gang at the zoo.  It was a much busier morning/day than I planned to have, especially since we had this awesome hotel room that we were leaving hours before we had to. Overall though, I am very thankful to Jessica, Leiann and Joey for being so incredibly thoughtful and getting us the room, champagne, lingerie ;-) and setting up our night at Shout House, and for everyone who came!