Harlaxton!

Our luggage for four months in England:

On the plane rides (a 2-hour flight to Houston, followed by a 9-hour flight to London):

Travel-wise, everything went really well.  I couldn't have asked for a smoother day.  Coop was in a good mood, and he complied with the "go potty when you get a chance" philosophy that I enforced.

I had packed one entire carry-on with stuff to entertain Cooper.  Lots of new toys and books and stickers that he's never seen.  But I hardly used any of it!  On the KC-Houston leg, the whole day was still so exciting that I didn’t want to burn through the brand new travel toys I bought.  So he finished off a sticker book we had started before Christmas, and made some progress in a magic coloring book (the markers work ONLY on the coloring book—thank you Lisa!) that he got for Christmas.

And then on the Houston-London leg, we had a little snack, and then we watched the in-seat televisions.  You could choose from a huge variety of programs, so I picked some cartoon things for Cooper, while I tried to finish up my Jodi Picoult novel.  (Hope you didn't already engrave the Mother of the Year plaque.)

They served us dinner (which Cooper didn’t eat, except for the Pepperidge Farm cookies), and then dimmed the lights.  Coop watched a few more tv shows.  Alan watched Pulp Fiction and had to keep putting up his hand to block the screen from Cooper’s view.  And somewhere around 8:30pm or so, I convinced Coop to lay down across the seats and rest with the little pillow and blanket they gave him.  He fell asleep.   Score.

This was the Customs line in London.  It was about 7am London time, which was 1am KS time, so we were all pooped, especially the firefighter.

We made it through, grabbed our luggage, and took the airport train (which perked up the firefighter a bit) to Terminal 3 to meet the Harlaxton folks.  They shuttled us via coach to the manor (Coop and I slept the entire 2.5-hour trip!).

We have a great flat in the manor.  It's essentially a fairly large studio apartment (with bathroom, small kitchen area, double bed, sitting/working area) +  a small bedroom (with door!) for Cooper.  It's perfect for the three of us!