Update Time!

Ok, so we have now been here for almost 6 weeks and I realise that I haven't updated recently, so thought I would try to get the last fee weeks updated in the next couple of posts!

I suppose I should start with the journey which I would love to say was uneventful, but it wasn't!!!  We left our house in England at 6.30am, on 11th September 2010. We were all up, showered, dressed and ready with our suitcases packed with enough things to last us for a couple of weeks as we weren't sure when our other things would arrive from England.

We arrived at Stanstead airport and checked in our suitcases and went to get a coffee and something to eat as we hadn't had breakfast! We thought we had left plenty of time to get through security and be ready for priority boarding! We said goodbye to Dad and went through to the queue for security which was much longer than we thought it woud be! There were a few tears as we said goodbye to Dad, not because we didn't want to go but because we knew it would be a couple of months before we saw him again - the longest we have ever been apart from him!

Emily was taking her laptop, so we knew that would beep the machines, but didn't think I would! I did! No problems, though and we all went through. Emily had made sure that she wasn't wearing neon nail varnish as that had set off the alarms when we had gone over before! (We had thought it was her braces on her teeth at first, but the security guard told us it was the nail varnish!)

However, what we weren't expecting was Alice's bag to set the alarm off. By this time, we were about half an hour from our boarding gate closing so I was not happy! And neither was Lucie as we had booked priority boarding to ensure that we could sit together and she was starting to panic! The security guards were really busy and it seemed like forever before they even started to go through Alice's bag! She had packed everything so well, wrapping her breakable things like her ds and ipod dockibng station in scarves etc, so they had to unwrap everything! Until they came to the culprit! The day before, she had told Lucie that she would have to put her body lotion into her suitcase as it wasn't allowed in her hand luggage. Unfortunately, she hadn't followed her own advise!!!!! If I wasn't so stressed, I guess I would have laughed, and I did later on, but not at the time!

By this point, we were 5 minutes from our boarding gate closing and, typically, we were the furthest boarding gate from security! I don't think I have ever run so fast! Alice and Lucie managed to keep up but Em was struggling and the others were worried that we would get on the plane and she wouldn't! I did reassure them that I wouldn't do that, but they still worried! We eventually got to our boarding gate and, guess what, they hadn't even started boarding! About 10 minutes after we got there, they then decided to change our boarding gate to one closer to security!!!!

So, all of the panic was for nothing!! We were second in the queue for prority boarding and eventually boarded the plane. We were all in need of a sit down and a drink, so I paid a fortune for a drink for each of us! At least the rush meant that Lucie didn't have time to get worked up about the flight!

Somehow, despite boarding the plane late, we still managed to get to Stockholm on time and were treated to the Ryanair fanfare which they play when one of their planes arrives on time!! Very cheesy but very funny too!

Once we got through passport control at the airport, Alessandro was there waiting for us and we then had an uneventful 5 hour car ride to our new home!

To saisfy your curiosity, here are a couple of photos of our new house. If you look carefully at the 1st one, you might be able to see Alessandro's Mum - she saw that I was taking a photo and so opened the kitchen door and waved as I took it!!!