About three or four months ago, we were at my parents’ house and my mom told me that they were thinking about going to London in October. My grandparents had always wanted to go to London and my grandfather got Alzheimers before they were ever able to go. Nama still wanted to go and my parents and sister were going there with her. Mom asked if I wanted to go and I was like, “Of course!”, but knew there was NO possible way I could actually leave for that long.

I mentioned it off-handedly to Jon and he immediately picked up the phone and called his mom, who said of course she could come watch the boys and the dates they were going even were over Jon’s fall break, so she would only need to watch them for three days by herself. Eisley was still basically free to take with me and was too little for me to feel comfortable leaving her that long, so I tried not to throw up and booked Eisley and me a ticket to London in October, because it was light years away and would never actually get here.

Then, about four minutes later, it was here and I was a sobbing mess to leave that long and to be that far away. 😉 I have always struggled with worry, but this trip took that to a new high. And yet, because of this trip, I was reminded that God is the one who is in control. Not me.

So, early, early in the morning after some very tearful goodbyes the night before, I woke up my baby girl, quietly got her dressed, snuck into the boys’ room to give them one more kiss each while they were still asleep, gave Nonnie a big hug and then Jon drove us to the airport.

Five o’clock in the morning and we had to use a filter because my eyes were so red from crying. 😉 At this point, I was half expecting myself to walk up to the gate, start shaking my head and just turn around and go back home.

Somehow, I stepped on the plane and we took off! We got the whole row to ourselves and Eisley spent most of the flight playing with the wrapper from the fruit snacks I gave her. 😉 SO glad I carted all those books and toys along with me. Ha!

Before I left, I went and got the boys each ten little presents, wrapped them and numbered them for each day I was gone. So every day, they each got to open one little gift. I got these pictures when we landed in Dallas for our layover – yay for smiles!!

Little Miss slept most of the flight from Dallas to New York City. My cousin got married the weekend before this trip, so all of us were just meeting in New York, spending the night there and then catching a VERY early flight to London the next day. So, it was just me and my girl for the entire first day, basically. We landed in New York, I got our bag and somehow made it to the Uber lines, found our Uber guy and he drove us to the Plaza where we were meeting up with everyone for dinner.

We made it!!! We were SO tired at this point and the trip had barely begun. Ha!

This was pretty much the entire reason we met at the Plaza – Nama had never been! Nama’s name is Eloise and Eisley’s name is a play off of that, so we had to get a picture of our two Eloises at the Plaza. Love this!!!

Dinner that night was interesting – Eisley started choking, it was a terrifying thing and somehow, I managed to grab the piece of pepperoni out of her throat. She started screaming/sobbing, I was sobbing, we caused quite the commotion in this tiny little Italian restaurant. Everyone was running over and our waiter was like, “I’ll be right back with ice cream!” So, Eisley got herself a free bowl of ice cream for the trauma. I don’t think I slept all night in the tiny hotel room because I could not stop praying for safety for her and my boys while I was gone.

So, basically no sleep later, the alarms went off in the middle of the night, we got dressed and went down for a fast breakfast and went back to the airport for our early flight to London. It was 1am Albuquerque time. Holy cow.

Eisley had no idea which way was up at this point, but she was so happy and cheerful to be walking around in the dark, basically empty airport. 😉 It’s fun being the only kid with all kinds of adults!

Ready for takeoff!! My hope was to keep Eisley up until we were in the air, but she passed out in the Ergo as we were getting ready to board. 😉 She did really well on the rest of the flight though!! We had such a fun group – Mom, Dad, me, Nama, Cayce’s dear friend Anna and Cayce. Here we go!