Images by John 'K'

It’s now a little over a day before I start my journey back to the UK to be reunited with my family after 4 months apart, and then once I get there it’ll be 7 more days before we travel back to the US to soart our new life properly here.

 

I’m at the point where I am looking forward to this so much that I can’t focus properly on work, and I’m also so nervous that I keep worrying that there’s something I was supposed to have ready for our return that I haven’t done, but I guess anything like that will be relatively easy to correct.

 

I know the next couple of weeks are going to be chaotic for various reasons, but it’ll be great to be back together again.

 

I have to admit though that I’m still worried about the idea that we’re not all coming back to live here, but that was Gemma’s decision and she’ll have to live with the challenges it brings. At least she has a bit of a support network around her, and assuming I can sort her computer out next week, we’ll be able to keep in touch easily.

 

We’re all going to face challenges. As well as what Gemma is facing, my two youngest will have to make new friends and settle into a new school with all the problems that brings. My wife will have the fun of not being able to work for at least 3 months, and will be far from the rest of her family (and I know that she’s going to have a hard time with that as she’s a very family-focussed person), and I’m going to have to make sure I scale down the time I sepnd doing work stuff (as I’ve somewhat let it take over during the past 8 months).  Added to that, our eldest daughter and her family will be loosing part of the support network that they have depended on until now, so I hope they’ll be OK.

 

This is going to be an exciting time for us, but also a difficult time, and I hope we manage to work through the difficulties. Assuming we can, I feel the life we have in the US will be much better than the one we had in the UK.