PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES....A BIG BOAT AND A TWO-STORY BUS

As we near the end of our trip, I will post a quick recap of our travels so far - and a look ahead at where we will be the next few days before heading home.

This, I guess, is the prologue to my endless posts of our trip-of-a-lifetime vacation to England and France.

On Thursday, July 23, we drove 45 minutes to a regional airport where we boarded a puddle jumper for a 37-minute flight to Chicago, where we settled in for a three-hour layover.

Blake, 5 days from turning eighteen years old, walked off the plane and said "see ya' at the boarding gate in three hours." It's amazing how quickly he was able to ditch us and we hadn't even left our home state yet, not to mention the country.

We boarded our flight at about eight that evening - the first overseas flight for the kids and me.

After eight(ish) hours folded into a shoebox in coach, I began to have a greater appreciation for my husband and the many trips he takes overseas for business each year. Sometimes he gets to fly business class but sometimes he flies coach with the common people.

It's not fun.

Thanks, Honey.

After being picked up at the airport by a driver that often works for my husband's company, my adrenaline started flowing again because, HELLO, I was in London traffic.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more.

Upon arriving at the company flat, my sympathy for Paul's frequent and exhausting trips was starting to lessen. Pictures will come later, but we are fortunate enough to be staying in one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. The building was built in the middle 1800's and has many ornate features that were so popular for that era. And it only took me two days to learn how to flush the toilet.

I kept wandering from room to room saying "Kids, aren't we the luckiest family in the world?"

Then I crawled into a big English bed and became comatose for three hours.

On Monday July 27, we boarded a train for a 90 minute ride to Portsmouth, England, where we spent the night so we could catch a three-hour ferry ride to Cherbourg France the next morning, Blake's eighteenth birthday.

I turned eighteen today and all I got was a lousy trip to Europe.

In Cherbourg we rented a car and Paul, with Blake as navigator, drove about an hour to Bayeux, a charming little French town in the region of Normandy, where we were fortunate AGAIN to stay in a lovely historic hotel.

"Kids, aren't we the luckiest family in the world?"

The next morning we were met by a lovely young French woman named Naomi who was our tour guide for the beaches of Normandy and the American Cemetery.

Next to giving birth to my children, it was the most moving experience in my life.

As Kayla and I put our feet in the waves of Omaha beach and I realized that my grandfather's boots had touched that sand, I thought once again that I was the luckiest woman alive to be able to be on this most revered piece of land.

And might I add? It was so heartwarming to see an American flag at almost every turn. These people have not forgotten.

After our tour, we had a few hours to pass back in Bayeux before driving back to Cherbourg. No vacation is without it's moments of hilarity and ours, thus far, have come as we wandered around Cherbourg listening to the GPS say, over and over again "recalculating..." We were lost for an hour. We could see the ships in the channel; we just couldn't get there.

We finally made it to the ferry port where we boarded the boat for our return trip across the English channel. Then we caught another train back to London, and a taxi to the apartment.

How do you say Exhausted in British?

This morning, we boarded a double decker bus for a tour of London. AN ALL DAY TOUR OF LONDON. We would have to live here for a year to see all the sights and take in all the history.

Tomorrow we will board another train and head to the town of Shenfield to visit our dear friends who lived in America for two years. We will celebrate Blake's eighteenth birthday with them, and hopefully have a couple of quiet days to visit before returning to London on Sunday to pack and get ready for an early morning flight home on Monday morning.

If you are not up to a blog version of boring vacation slides, I advise you to ignore me for the next couple of weeks. This is for my children and I intend to record every moment that I can remember because, even though they've done their share of eye-rolling over here, I insist they will want these memories recorded one day so they will remember how we were so gifted at embarrassing them that we were able to do it in two foreign countries.

Plus, right now I feel like we are the luckiest family in the world.