Week 51 Summary - Home Sweet Home!

Wow!  We can't believe that a year has come and gone.  Day by day it went by slow, but all of a sudden it is over.  What an adventure!

This final week Ashton somehow got the desire to learn how to say really big numbers.  He can correctly say any number below 999 quintillion!

The highlight of this final week was Ashton's school Christmas program.  He learned Jingle Bells in 5 different languages with his class.  They were adorable as they sang English, German, French, Italian and Czech versions.  He has more friends across the world at the age of 6 than I had at 30!  It has been fun for him to learn all of the different cultures.  Ask him to do his Italian accent sometime, you'll be impressed!

After the Christmas program we hit the Christmas market one last time to get brats and a pork sandwich!

Emilee and her friends later in the week hit the Christmas market and Chocolate house one last time as a group.  It has been fun to see the kids navigate the bus system and feel more freedom than they did at home.

This week included lots of tearful goodbyes at church.  We had the ward Christmas party on Saturday and then church the next day.  Emilee and her friends cried every time they got together.  Probably the hardest was the last day at church when they knew they'd probably never see each other again.  It took at least 30 minutes to tear them apart.

The boys were much easier.  Slapped each other on the back and said, "Thanks man, it was good to know you!"  ;)

We thoroughly enjoyed the people here and are going to miss them tremendously.  As a final goodbye from the Dufforts, they invited us over for Sunday dinner. We cooked racklettes which is yummy cheese, onions and ham melted in a special cooker and spread over potatoes.  It was delicious and he had a fun time watching the kids play the snorting game, the name game and charades.  They are a great family and we are going to miss them and their kids.

On the weekend we started packing and cleaning to get ready for the Barn inspection.  We were up front with the small damages that we caused and our landlords were super cool.  They were a very fun family to get to know better.

After lots of cleaning and packing on Tuesday morning we were ready to go.  Our plan was to take the suitcases on the bus because we didn't have a car.  I was at a meeting at KNEIP and Bob Kneip was very gracious and offered to send out a couple of cars to pick us up.

It was quick and easy and very nice!  He has an Audi S6, so we rode to the airport in luxury!

At that point the waiting started.  We were a couple hours early, but no one complained because we were going home!!!!

We flew to London and spent the night there.  We got the very cheapest tickets possible to save the company money.  When we landed in London, we immediately started looking for a Nandos.  Luckily, 4 tube stops away there was a Nando's portuguese chicken restaurant.  We love that place!  Yummy, hot chicken with fries and garlic bread.  We felt very lucky to get that one last time as it was one of our favorite meals in Europe.

After an overnight stay at the Heathrow Ibis, we headed through security and waited another couple hours.  Luckily we had a few pounds to get ride of so we had breakfast at Wagamammas.  Another one of our favorite places in London.  We were excited to fly home on a 747.  It is such a big and beautiful airplane!  The plane ride to Dallas was uneventful, but about 10 hours long.  There were thunderstorms as we approached, so that made it interesting, but we landed safe and sound.

From there we had a 5 hour layover.  We were super excited to eat Texas BBQ at Dickies.  We couldn't believe how big the portions were.  Super yummy!  We were all pretty exhausted and pretty much slept the 2.5 hours to SLC.  By that time it was midnight and we'd been up over 24 hours.  Grandma and Grandpa were super nice to pick us up.  It was awesome to see them!

Driving home was sort of surreal as not a lot has changed.

As we got close, there was a big Welcome Home sign with balloons that the Aagards had put up.  It made us feel awesome to be back amongst such good friends and family!!!!  Thank you!!!!

I'll have to think more about a final blog entry to summarize our thoughts and feelings about moving the family to Europe for a year.  It was definitely the hardest yet funnest things we've done as a family.  We're sure glad to be home!!!!

Thank you to everyone that has actually followed us throughout the year!  The blog will be awesome for our family to look back and remember the details, but hopefully it has also been fun to watch the crazy Cahoons and our adventures in Europe!

Pics from Week 51