I mentioned the other day that we all just got back last week from a 2 week trip around England. We covered 900 miles taking H to visit grandparents, meet cousins and aunts and uncles for the first time, and just start showing her around her other native land. It’s really important to Adam and me that H grow up knowing both the US and the UK, and this was the first of many trips overseas for her. It was kind of awesome seeing her first passport, with her little baby picture, get stamped for the first time. It made me feel so content, knowing all the amazing things this little girl will grow up seeing and doing.

And the best part was we survived air travel with her! We had some rough patches; leaving Newark we sat on the tarmac for 2 hours because of weather, and leaving London we sat for 1 hour because of traffic. H did NOT enjoy waiting on the plane, and I don’t blame her. None of us did. The seat belt sign was on the whole time because we’d left the gate, which meant she was strapped to me the whole time we waited. No diaper changes, no grabbing her bottle if she got hungry, and no putting her down anywhere. So, yeah, she cried and fussed. Coming home she actually howled (we were all pretty exhausted from travel by then). We flew British Airways and had a great flight attendant coming home who COULD move around the cabin, so she held H and rocked her, showed her all the people on the plane, and tried to help us keep her happy. She even held H at the end of the flight so we could get all our carry-on gear organized. Allie was great.

And once the plane was moving, H could not have been a better flier. She slept in her bassinet the whole time, flirted with all the other passengers, and was just an amazing little trooper.

We landed in London the morning of Friday, July 27th–the day of the Olympics Opening Ceremony. It was such a great atmosphere. Greeters and volunteers everywhere in the airport, and just everything feeling really excited and charged. We stopped at my father-in-law’s for lunch and then spent the rest of the day making our way in traffic from London to Manchester, the first official stop on our whirlwind tour. We got into our apartment 10 minutes into the ceremony, so we watched most of it while we got H and ourselves settled.

Morgan’s bachelor party was in Manchester, so while Adam went out with the brothers on Saturday H and I explored central Manchester and the Northern Quarter.

Read more on Travelogue, Tour of England: Manchester and Blackburn…