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Whenever I travel, a saying of my father's always comes to mind. "Be it ever so humble, there's no toilet like home." What can I say? When he's right, he's right.

So I've been pretty quiet here for the last month, and that's because we took a last minute trip to the states. We decided to try and catch a hop home, and it worked. To catch hop, for my non-mil friends, is to fly "Space Available" on a pre-scheduled military cargo flight. The advantage to flying Space-A is that it's free. Yeah. We flew from the UK to the US and it cost us under $20 just to buy a few box lunches.


The biggest disadvantage to catching a hop is that the mission comes first and you come last. That means there are no guarantees you'll get on a flight, no guarantees the flight that is SUPPOSED to be flying back to England will actuall go to England. (Our flight was diverted to a tiny base in Spain), and no guarantees that if it does go to the orignial destination that it will leave or arrive when it is scheduled to.

Anyway, this blog isn't about catching hops. (There will be a blog to that effect. But not today. It's just not in me today.) I just wanted to post something to say we had a blast in the US, were sad we missed meeting up with some people, and are so glad to be back "home."

It's strange calling England home. It's weird to feel more comfortable getting back to driving on the left side of the road. It's hard to describe how odd it is to go "home" to Omaha and to miss our little townhouse in East Anglia. But I'm so glad to be unpacking for the last time. I'm actually looking forward to doing dishes tonight. Isn't that sad? But it's nice to do dishes "my way" in my sink with my stuff.

And I can't WAIT to sleep in my own bed tonight.

I brought home a completely different baby than I left with. Caleb has grown up so much in the last three weeks! He's pulling himself up like an expert, and finally figured out how to let himself back down. He's figured out how to drink from a straw. He's climibg stairs as if he's been doing it all his short life. He FINALLY decided to start holding his own bottle! (Insert chorus of angels here.) AND he occassionally feeds himself crackers and small bits of food! I know, he's so slow in the eating department. I think even at nearly eleven months old he'd still be perfectly content to feed from an umbilical chord. But we're making some progress! Slowly, but surely.

He was also the BEST BABY EVER while traveling! He hardly fussed on any of the planes and slept almost the whole time of every flight. I was so worried about the trans-Atlantic flights, but he was an angel. I'm glad that we traveled when we did, because I'm sure he woudln't have been this angelic if he was at a walking age!

Unfortunately, I came back to mountains of homework and papers to tend to. So I'll probably disappear again for a few weeks until the middle of the month when one of these classes is over. Then my parents will be here at the end of the month! Hooray!

It was a wonderful trip (except for the attempts to get back home), but I'm glad it's over and I get back back to normal life. :)