Don't Blink!

What a month!  We expected October to be a busy time with company, halloween and the possibility of hearing about a move!  And we did hear: Ohio in the middle of May.  Next May... 8 months away!  Talk about heads spinning...  It took us until mid November to really wrap ourselves around the idea that we would be leaving the UK, boooooo.  Last call sucks! 

It was a shock!  We expected to hear from the Air Force but, to be honest, we thought the numbers would either leave us here or put us in Alabama in August.  What a shock when Sam came home and told us that we were heading to the Miami Valley...  and not the valley near Miami, Florida and Key Largo...  but Southern Ohio, Dayton to be exact.  He was selected to attend the Air Force Institute of Technology for a Masters Degree in Air and Space Systems Engineering.  It's a one year program which runs from June 2010 to June 2011.  Beyond that, we really don't know what, or where, we will be!

But, back to Autumn 2009.  At least we think we had an Autumn 2009...

We had the pleasure of Gran B visiting us for a few days in October.  The girls loved seeing her and we had a great time.  It was a busy time: The Darley Primary School Harvest play and Halloween Dance were huge successes!

Sandy won a prize for the best costume: she was an Ice Princess!   Way to go!

The cows in the back pasture broke the fence and invaded our garden!

Sam got out to the Lake District for a 20 mile jaunt along a Roman Road.  This was the road called High Street.  It's still there, 2000 years later!

We even made it up to one of our favorite places, Loch Fyne Scotland for a few days.  Unfortunately, Scotland decided to bless us with some classic Scottish weather: buckets of rain, howling wind and bone-chilling cold.  It was a bit rough, but still a fantastic time!

Sam did make it up a couple of the more remote peaks in the area but, it wasn't the nicest of ascents.  Especially with the Scottish Trolls under bridges!

After a couple days of gayle force winds, rain and spinning heads, we decided to head south for England and get ready for Gran B to cross back to the States and our trip to Galway, Ireland!

Galway is on the West Coast of Ireland, near the Connemara national park and just south of Donegal and Northern Ireland.  We booked the trip back in August without really thinking we would be wrapping our heads around a move but, managed to get enough clean clothes in a backpack to make a run at it.

We were a bit taken back at the Manchester airport when we saw our plane: a 2 prop special.  The flight was nice and quick but, a bit loud.  We made it to Galway and weren't quite sure where we were.  Did we manage to board the wrong flight and land in Central America???  After flying the cheap airlines in Europe, we were used to disembarking on the tarmac and running through the rain to get in the terminal.  But, this was the first time for Kelly that the terminal, baggage claim, immigration, rental cars and coffee shop were all in the same tiny hangar.  Sam swears he saw the same in Belize back in the late 80's...

We managed to bribe (literally) the Polish guy managing the rental car desk into giving us a bigger car with child seats and hit the road.  Calling these roads was a bit of a stretch.  West Ireland must have the WORST roads in all of the EU.

But, the house we booked was in Oughterard.  About 50KM north of Galway city.  The house was absolutely fantastic!  Lots of room, heat and a HUGE flat screen to watch Battlestar Galactica.... which we did every night!

Some of the sights we took in were Connemara national park (which could have been one of the remotest, loneliest places we've been), Kylemore Abbey, Sligo (the childhood home of William Butler Yeats) and Northern Ireland.

Connemara was one of the remotest, loneliest places we've passed through.  Not much was happening there.  Small, winding roads.  Open heathlands, mist shrouded hills, dark mysterious loughs.  It was very Tolkienesque, all that was missing was Gollum...

Kylemore Abbey was on the edge of Connemara.  It was a bit odd.  A restored Victorian Girls school and Abbey, mostly paid for by Americans.  Which turned out to be a strange phenomenon.

The Victorian Gardens at Kylemore were nice.  Especially for Sandy, who was studying Victorian England in school.

We had no idea but, this part of Ireland seemed to swarming with Americans.  It was really weird.  Especially when we went to Sligo.  Our waiter was even an American.  Or, maybe we were just getting really accustomed to the Irish accents... But the town was fairly nice.  Especially around the river front.

One thing worth mentioning about the trip to Sligo were the roads.  Again, quite possibly the WORST roads in all of the UK.  We drove about 250KM (150miles) and it took nearly 8 hours!!!! And that was on the main North South artery in all of Western Ireland!!!

Enough about the roads.  Sligo wasn't just on the list for being the childhood home of William Butler Yeats, Kelly's grandfather's family was from County Donegal, just north of there.  So, we drove through the County Donegal but, alas, there were no Bonners with signs looking for long, lost foreign relatives...but the scenery was spectacular!

Another reason for the long drive was to cross the "border" into Northern Ireland.  Which we did at the river between Blacklion, Ireland and Belcoo, Northern Ireland.  We weren't really sure what to expect.  Would there be a "border", immigration checks, police checks, British Army???  Nope.  To be honest, the only difference we noticed were the street signs.



Ireland uses continental European signs and Northern Ireland uses British signs.  That was about it.  So, we headed to the Peace park on the border and let the girls play with the Irish kids and the swans for a while before making the drive back to Galway.

The next couple of days were really rough weather.  Very bad storms with strong winds.  Which gave us some good time to read horror fiction stories, think about Ohio and panic.  We then bought some wine and planned trips to Spain and Portugal for November and January.

Our flight home was extremely "fun".  As we were making our southerly approach through the storm clouds at high speed and low altitude, Kelly and all the other passengers on the leeward side of the plane were making really high pitched, nervous sounds and breaking into a cold sweat, and developing a healthy phobia of plane landings, while Sandy and Molly laughed and giggled about the roller coaster ride.  Seriously, the plane wing was probably only a couple of inches from touching dirt before a hard shift to port and a bouncy touch down. 

It seemed that the weather was keying off our spinning heads and was very unsettled.  Let's find the car and get back to Yorkshire!

We settled down from our Irish vacation to celebrate Guy Fawkes week, or as Sam likes to call it, 'Burn the Dude Day'.  The bonfires and fireworks were a bit smaller than last year but, we had a good time anyway.

We had now settled down and accepted the move to Ohio so, we could enjoy a wonderful vacation to Central Spain to get over the tumultuous Fall so far! That was after Sam came back from a 2 week TDY to the states...  there was a not too happy family back in England... But he did manage to use his free time to find a fantastic house in the Salamanca provence!

And, we had a visit from Poppa!  And his Iphone, with which the girls are naturals at using...

After the busy, busy and fleeting Autumn, we needed a vacation.  Thank goodness for cheap European flights...Vamos a Espana!