This weekend was calm and good. It rained a lot, and it continues to be amazingly cool for Mid-July - high of 65 most days. The rain gave us an excuse to stay inside and get some rest.
Kate, Harry, and I finally began our IKEA-box recycling-cardboard homebuilding project in the garage. See attached. They really enjoyed it, as did I. Kate really took to the home decorating (apple doesn't fall far from the maternal tree).
Sunday, we drove to Stonehenge, which is exactly 1 hour away. It was pretty crowded with tourists, so we eschewed the tickets and long lines and just went to the fence, took a pic, and left. We were lucky with the rain, in that it rained pretty much the whole drive there and back, but not on us while were there (much). We almost got a big Stonehengey puzzle to do in portugal, but we are not certain that we will have room in our very limited baggage allotment. We then went to Salisbury and had a picnic off the wagon tailgate. We did see the cathedral from the outside, but we got tired, and the rain started up again, so we eschewed the cathedral inside on this trip. I also played some connect4 with both kate and harry, and started to teach Kate backgammon. Harry says that he wants to learn backgammon also. We'll see.
This is a calm time for me for work, i think. I had a big trip planned to Hamburg next week that is now postponed to September. I will be going to Paris Thursday-Friday for one customer meeting and to train the Paris team on what we do. I have similar trip to Munich in August for the team there.
In reflection, we are now through the scramble of the move and have started living a normal life, in fact, quite a blessed life. While we miss the enveloping warmth and support of being in the bosom of family in Gloucester, we have each other, and we have time together. There are always worries -- about the pending collapse of the euro, the pending debt crisis in China, but we are somewhat protected in the short term. And these things may create opportunities, after all.
Most of all, we are thankful for your visits past and future. We are really looking forward to Portugal (did you know that Portugal is the Arab work for "orange"?) as a time to really unplug.
Christopher Corr
