God Save the Queen!

Big changes, many big changes coming our way. All of them exciting, many of them still unknown, but we are making plans at a breakneck pace to get the Smith Barnes clan over to Jolly Old by the first week of June.

We don't know where we'll be living, but we suspect it will be in the Cambridge area, either in the city or a village just outside. The government will put us up for three months (hopefully less, please God) while we look for a rental that suits us. The kids are enrolled to attend the Cambridge International School come fall. Harry will be entering the Reception class, and Charlotte Nursery school. Their uniform list is precious: Barbour coats and plimsolls (sneakers, people) and for Charlie, gingham dresses from Marks and Spencer. It just oozes British cute.

We took the kids in to the Bethesda headquarters of NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence) two weeks ago to apply for their Official (red) passports. They got to wear visitor badges and every time we entered a room someone would yell "uncleared!" (as if two toddlers and their mother planned to walk off with our nation's secrets). It was all very Mission Impossible.

So now we wait for the pounds of paperwork to be vetted. Our visas come next (we're told the forms take days to fill out). We should have our orders in the next few weeks, then it's off to the moving office to schedule not one, not two, but three visits by the moving trucks. They will let us ship and store a total of 18,000 pounds. Which really isn't tough, because the rooms in the UK are so tiny. We'll probably leave half our worldly belongings behind in storage.

This experience has only one comparison for me. It's a lot like planning a funeral (minus the dead body and the big buffet dinner). There is so much to do in such a short period of time, we thankfully don't have the luxury to stop and think about what we're going to miss. At the moment we are concurrently renovating our basement to make it desirable for renters, showing the house to prospective tenants and trying to find a new job for the nanny, which is just heartbreaking enough in itself. My friends, bless them, get a bit blue when I talk about our move, and selfishly I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. (Imagine the reverse). I just wish we had the time to sit down for a big group hug and lament the time we won't be together for birthday parties and play dates and summers at the beach and at the pool eating hot dogs with the kids. We love our life here.

There is of course an awesome upside, I remind everyone: visits to Europe! So the next Girls Night Out will be in Scotland...I'm OK with that!

I have ordered my - Christ Almighty I am not kidding - two text-book-sized driving instruction manuals to guide us through the driving test in the UK. And I'm a pro now at vetting the real estate listing from afar. The house, we have agreed, will be big enough for visitors.

So for you, dear readers, I have one assignment: please get our your planners and schedule a visit for next spring. By then we'll surely know where all the good pubs are.