England 2010....

I am way behind in my blogging but thought I would try to get back to it. Here's a recap of our crazy summer adventure to England back in July....


Well...we made it to and from England in about 3 weeks returning just in time for Kaz to go to military school the next day. Yikes!

We did what we said we wouldn't do again...military HOPS. For those of you who have tried this yourselves, you are already shaking your head and wondering what fantastic story we have to tell. For those of you who have not had the joy in trying free flying with the military during the summer, I'm not sure if I'll do it justice in my blog.

It took 5 days to get to England, 4 to get back. We drove to 3 different states (DL, NJ, MD) to get a flight to Germany- we were literally the last to get a seat, and waited in Germany 2 days before deciding to buy last minute RyanAir tickets to England (not something we anticipated, but really, we should have).

Once we made it to England, we spent about 8 days visiting Kaz's family. We have always been very blessed by their hospitality and willingness to show us a good time. We have free places to stay and fun things to do. This time we were able to spend a few days at Auntie Jadzia's new place by the seaside with Kaz's 2 cousins, Izzy (12 yrs. old) and Sofia (8 yrs. old). They had a fantastic time playing with Jade and keeping her entertained.

All in all we saw some pretty remarkable things on our trip. We visited an old estate home, road a kiddie train with Auntie Jola, ran in the water at the seaside, went to a sealife refuge, road some rides at the fair, visited Kaz's Polish grandmother, ate at a lot of pubs and played at the playground. Jade had a fantastic time despite all of the craziness of traveling. To her, every airport, hotel, and taxi was a new adventure waiting to happen. She was great and we couldn't have asked for a more agreeable traveling companion.

When all was said and done, we got ready to go back home. We tried to leave from England for 2 days (plane broken) before buying more commercial tickets to Germany. Once in Germany we waited a day (slept on a park bench in a small mall because the base inn was full) before getting on a plane back to MD where our car was.

It was a whirlwind of a vacation. And this time we mean it when we say...no more HOPS. While our actual visiting was nice and being able to see family is great, the uncertainty of travel in the military is very stressful. Next time, we'll buy tickets with actual dates and seat assignments.

Here are some photos to commemorate our experience.

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