On to Europe

And so we have left the US once again and are now in cold, rainy England waiting to board a ship this morning for a cruise to cold, sunny Iceland and Norway.

We squeezed in lots during our two weeks in America. After my Dad's service, I stayed at my mother's and helped her pack her kitchen in preparation for moving to a different apartment in the Maples, the senior living community she and my father lived in.

They had a two-bedroom apartment that sat at the end of the hallway - as far away from the entrance as possible. She doesn't need the second bedroom and has landed a new place that is the closest apartment to the entrance, which will help immensely since the walk is getting more and more difficult for her.

We bagged some stuff for the charity bins, converted several VHS tapes to DVDs and generally got things as close as we could until the move in the middle of this month.

The Dyer women at the reunion

LK was several hours to the west during this week with Peg. On Friday they joined Sandy, Dave and Jordan and drove several hours south and west to the family golf outing and reunion that is held every year.  

 Judging by the activity on Facebook, it was a grand event and Linda returned with several pictures of the event. You can check them out at our Shutterfly share site here.

I like the one to the left of Peg with Sandy and LK.  Peg looked so fantastic in her photos. It's hard to believe these were taken just three days before her 93rd birthday.

 While Linda was celebrating with her family, I was taking the Ethan Allen Express back to New York. My mother made double sure that I didn't miss this train, and I was there with 20 minutes to spare. 

It is such a comfortable ride - quiet, scenic, no security checks, no seatbelts and you end up right in the middle of Manhattan without a taxi ride. I walked the few blocks to the Port Authority, caught a bus to Freehold and was back at Walt and Terry's within 90 minutes.

LK flew back the next day and we spent the remainder of the week sitting by the pool coping with a heat wave, with temperatures soaring into the 90s (mid-30s celsius) each day. And now we are in England in the middle of its wettest summer in history with the high today not much warmer than we would have in Hobart if we had decided to spend the winter at home.

I know. It's England.

But the whole point of coming here is to get on the cruise ship, and we will be doing that in a couple of hours. We've looked forward to seeing Iceland and the Norwegian fjords for ages. Should be fun even if it is a bit cool this far north.