Summer's End

The summer is officially over for me :(  We decided to go home (US) for the summer even though we've only been here for 5 months.  Brian and I booked a trip to Jamaica to celebrate our 12 year anniversary so even if we wanted to change our minds we couldn't get a refund on our trip, so, why not?  Ive never been to Jamaica and have always wanted to go.  I HAD THE BEST TIME!!! The resort was beautiful, the weather awesome and the company of my husband was much needed.  Also, we decided that if we want to be financially free that we need help so we hired a financial counselor.  Our first appointment is next week so we needed to get all our frivolous spending and extravagant vacations out the way. lol.

We had my daughter's birthday party in Hinesville.  She shared her party with my godson.  That too was pretty awesome.  My friend, godson's mother, did an awesome job.  All I really did was send her money (that's my kind of party planning- lol).  I felt bad for my son though.  We left to go to the UAE two days after his birthday and I really didn't have the time (or energy) to give him a birthday party.  We do parties every other year and the way it has turned out we do 2 every other year (one per child), but it looks like we may now change that to 1 every year (one per child) since my son did have one this year.  It should be a little cheaper this way, we will see.

We decided to take another detour through London on our way home.  We didn't realize that we had to take ALL of our luggage off the plane in London.  Apparently there is a new rule that if your layover is more than 8 hours you have to take all your luggage off and check them back in at the connecting flight.  We had 9 checked bags and 3 carryons.  This proved to be a very difficult task.  The terminal for our connecting flight required us to take 2 trains and trolleys are not allowed on the train.  Brian and I had to carry all 9 bags between the two trolleys.   We had the kids holding the doors open and screaming for us to hurry up.  Im laughing now, but I was one hot lady.  When we got to the counter our flight wasn't even available to check our bags through self check in because we were 16 hrs early.  Our connecting flight was very gracious and did not charge us another over baggage fee because I explained that I didn't know I had to take our bags off the plane.  After finally doing an early check with our bags we check our carryon bags at a place in the airport that "watches" your bags, for up to 24 hrs., for a small fee.  This time we had a 16 hr lay over and decided to catch the big bus tour to get a quick glimpse of London.  Even though it rained it was well worth the trip.  

I start teaching one week before most teachers here in the UAE go back because I am a new teacher and my school has a separate orientation geared especially for new teachers.  I hope it is worth it!  Hopefully this will give me more time to get over jet lag and decorate my classroom.

Jet lag is a beast.