Pops.

Last week my dad finally made it over to the UK for a visit.

Moo took to her Pops instantly, excitedly waking him up in the mornings with a loud “squee!” and then spending our days showing him around our beautiful town.

It was nice to finally have my dad visit and see our lives in the UK.  I know he worries a lot, and I think the trip went a long way to laying those fears to rest: we’ve carved out a life for our little family here in the UK, and it’s a good life.

Family coming to visit is always a double-edged sword.  I really do like living here (even if it was a hard adjustment in the beginning) and sharing my life here with my mom or dad for a few weeks reminds me why I love Brighton:  I love having the sea at the bottom of my street, the cry of seagulls in the early morning, and 10pm sunsets with a jug of Pimms on the beach in the summer.  I love the life we’ve made here.  I’m also reminded just how far away my entire family is, how hard that is, and sometimes it feels as though it would be worth uprooting this little family of mine to move us all to the US.  But I do count myself lucky as my parents are visiting more and more, mom will be over in the summer as will dad, who decided he couldn’t be away from Moo for too long.    As an expat, all you can do really is make sure the time you DO have together is quality time.  And we did.

It was a good week.