Back in the UK.

Hi

Sorry I haven't posted anything for a while but our internet connection has been amazingly bad. I thought the Falklands was slow and unpredictable but the O2 dongle was absolute rubbish. We now have a 3 dongle and so far it's 100% better. So we landed back on British soil on May the 19th 2010. I went to my parents with the kids and Allen went off to take over the new quarter at Brampton, Cambridgeshire. My parents then had the children stay for 2 nights and I went and helped sort the storage stuff. It was very weird unpacking things that we hadn't seen for 5 years - we'd put a consignment in from before we went to Washington DC in 2005. Unfortunately the storage container it was in had leaked so a lot of the fabric stunk. Allen contacted the company and they agreed to pay for dry cleaning and 60% of other replacement costs. Better than nothing. So we've bought a new mattress and had 175 pounds worth of dry cleaning done.

The first weekend we were home mum and dad did a family BBQ for us. I've put in one photo of Jacob with a hot air balloon in the background that flew over during the evening. We also went to my Great Uncle's 90th birthday in Southend. I've put in a photo of dad, my nephew Matthew, plus Allen and me. It was a brilliant day.

After finally getting our stuff from storage from America, they sent us someone else's my mistake, we could then go shopping for things we didn't have. Jacob is now the very proud owner of a cabin bed with Abi being extremely jealous.

Dad let us have his car for a week while him and mum went off to Greece with my sister and her family. So during that week we went on a visit over to Gloucestershire to see Janine, Paul, Isabel and George. I've included a photo of the children enjoying an ice cream in the Cotswold Wildlife Park.

It's great to be back. Quartering charges have come as a bit of a shock as have petrol prices. But we're loving the weather, seeing family and friends and the choice in the shops. Not sure we'll survive without a car but we know the bus timetable pretty well already!

Rachael.