Really I feel like we’ve been here a month already! Where do I begin? Well as as the song goes…let’s start at the very beginning…of the journey.

As our final days in Atlanta drew to a close, we had a yard sale and gave everything away that we didn’t sell. It’s ridiculous what you can collect over 18 years…and of course nothing electrical could come with us, it’s just not worth all the adaptors! We also finalized the sale of the house which was ridiculously stressful. In the US the buyer pays for a full inspection, and can negotiate fixes etc. even the most irrelevant things like ensuring the sprinklers ‘work properly’. Well that’s all open to interpretation of course, so we had lots language to edit in our contract. Yup pretty stressful! The good news on the house is it all closed last week, so we are now ready to begin our search for our new home, with intensity, here in Leeds.

The flight itself was easy – we were even upgraded! Thanks to my husband’s meticulous planning the dogs were boarded and collected as planned, and we jumped in a rental car to Leeds! It was pretty weird to say the least, driving across the M62 to a city we’d never lived in before! Our rental house is fine. Small, but big enough for temporary accommodation, and best of all just moments away from Roundhay Park, allowing us regular runs and walks around the lake.

Hugh has already started school – in fact he started 3 days after we arrived! It’s a lovely small local school which he adores, especially as he can walk himself to and from school, thus gaining the independence we had promised him. Poor Poppy has had to do tests for streaming, as we didn’t have SAT scores for her. She starts on Wednesday this week and has already taught herself to tie her tie with YouTube videos. She’s made friends there too – a lovely Australian girl showed her around, so it’s great that they can both be the ‘foreigners’ together! Most importantly for Poppy she has a cheer team. She’s tried out for the various levels and made her presence known.

I’ve not stopped eating since we arrived and joked the other evening that I felt a little bit ‘This Country’ in my sweats, eating fish and chips watching the World Cup. Kerry would be proud.

As we’re settling in I’ll be posting more regularly again. For now thanks for tuning in. We love our new life so far, and are happy to report no regrets.

That is how it is starting to feel anyway! The beginning of the end of our time in Atlanta. It feels quite daunting to be a quarter of the way through April, knowing we only have 6 weeks left of the school year, and therefore 6 weeks left of needing to be here in Atlanta. Once the end of May arrives we could be on a flight.

We have stuck a pin in the calendar and are working back from an ETA in Leeds of the week of June 11th. We needed to at least plan on a departure date, as the dogs have to go through a time sensitive process of vaccinations and paperwork. We also needed to find a house to rent that would allow pets. That search, although stressful, was thankfully brief. Although Leeds has an abundance of rental properties, given it’s three universities, there is a dearth of landlords who welcome pets. We were lucky, thanks to the help of friends in Leeds, to find a home that will welcome our dogs, and give us a 6 month lease while we search for a home to buy.

So while it’s exciting that we now have a place to land, we’ve recently had numerous poignant ‘lasts’ – our last Spring break, our last Masters tournament in the same time zone, our last Easter in the US. I’ve tried to conceal their significance to me from my children – I don’t want to keep saying ‘this is our last…’. Interestingly though, instead of a fear of leaving, I have more concerns about adapting to our new home. Will I still love the UK as much as ever? Will I constantly compare things with here? Will we be accepted? Will the children make friends?

Poppy and Hugh continued to be buoyed by the thought of an extra month of summer holiday, their biggest concerns right now appear to be being penalized at school for US spelling, and ‘English money’, and how to convert from dollars to pounds and vice versa…Dave and I, while not challenged by currency conversions, are suddenly confronted with dealing with Celsius, grammes and kilograms! This move once again reminding me how two countries, sharing the same language, can be poles apart on so many other things!