Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. Those ten days "on holiday" in Pittsburgh were a wonderful yet stressful ten days. Every moment, it seemed, someone wanted our attention. Ah, yes, I can finally say I can empathize with the whirring and constant motion of trips home that friends experience and stress about. Is this to become the norm of subsequent trips home? It was not a bad thing, no. I enjoyed seeing people again before we leave for good. It's just this particular trip required us to give attention to turning over our home to the renter and squeezing in as much snuggly buzzing time with Greenbean as possible. It will be months until we can be with her again. Mark and I rang in the New Year by revitalizing our very first tradition. Before we had the "cooking for friends and playing cards into the wee hours of the night, completely ignoring any clock" tradition. We had the "huge pile of sushi in front of a fire" tradition. Our first New Year's together, we did not live in our house and the only fireplace accessible to us was Mark's grandmothers. So we ordered a huge pile of sushi, drove into Johnstown, snuggled in front of the fire and rang in the new year. We revisited this tradition on the very last night of being in our "home" with a couple of friends and a huge pile of sushi and a fire burning hot. The first day of 2007 was spent playing tetris with our luggage and the contents therein, everything needed to fit, final house clean up, finding where Greenbean was hiding and stealing private cuddling moments to say goodbye, wishing I had just a moment alone on such a hectic morning, Mark's mom and grandmother being there, my parents being there and my brother finishing moving himself in. He already had plans for entertaining that night, he could have at least waited for the couch to get cold :) We arrived in England to our new home safe and sound, our bodies are back to being screwed up with the time zone switch again (it's 4 am here and I'm wide awake... stupid body, thinking it's only 11 pm). I was telling Mark earlier, how this all still just does not feel real, like we're just over here staying at a bed and breakfast. I imagine the reality will settle in once our belongings arrive and we're unpacked making the new place look and feel more like home. Which, in theory, our belongings should arrive this weekend or the following week.