We were in south England for two days and now we're in North Wales.

I've been keeping a journal in the point of view of PJ the hippo who's gone everywhere with us. 

I've also taken about 200 pictures, which I've been uploading to my facebook page.  If you're my friend on there, you can see them there. I probably won't get any posted here until I get back.  Perhaps I will, but it's not likely.  Too much to do. =)

We're going to Conwy Castle in North Wales and then going on to Hadrian's wall at the Scotland and England border.

Hello from Maryland!

We arrived safely at around 9:45 last night. We're at my grandfather's house, visiting. My older sister and her family is living with him a the moment while her husband works in DC, so we get to see them as well.  My mother, sisters, and cousins are in the capitol right now, meeting with senators and having a tour.

On the way up here we had some van troubles. Our van smelled badly, like brakes and it rumbled whenever we started up again after stopping for gas.  We had just had the breaks replaced the day before leaving, because before it had sounded like a plane coming in for landing when we stopped.

So my dad took the van in to the shop here in DC, instead of going to the capitol like my mom would have liked (my aunt drove up in her van, so my mom was able to take that in. We had too many people to take the metro, too much $$).   The mechanics figured out what was wrong and fixed it and replaced two tires because of wear from the new breaks.  Bleah, but at least it works now.  Our van is only about 5 years old, but it's gone about 240,000 miles. =)  And all but 9,000 of those were with us.

We leave MD on November 2nd, I believe, stopping in Nashville for the night. We'll be seeing friends there, too, hopefully.

On a sad note, I was planning on bringing Sam with me, but I forgot him at the last minute, so hopefully I'll at least be able to claim PJ from Lissi in Nashville and PJ can come.