White Wine in the Sun

I had grand plans for this blog.

Plans that included detailing the weeks leading up to our much-anticipated Christmas trip to the UK. A trip 3-years in the making, where my sons would be meeting the majority of our family for the first time and my husband would be returning home for the first time since our wedding in 2019. The blog was going to be epic. A real tear jerker. I even started hand-drafting it in one of my notebooks—like I usually do.

But, honestly…ain’t nobody got time for that.

Lately, my head has been consumed with packing lists, sheer panic and worst-case-scenarios. Outside of the topics above, I can barely string a sentence together; like I’ve found myself getting tongue-tied more than usual. The last three nights, I’ve woken at 4am from nightmares about my kids endlessly screaming on the flight and other passengers getting nasty with us—one particular dream had us being escorted off the flight, mid-air.

I wish I was joking.

Needless to say, I’m anxious about this trip. Which is pretty on-brand for me; there’s usually about six anxiety-inducing scenarios circulating in the back of my head on a daily basis, so what’s one more? Well, this one is pretty huge. And I’ve fallen into the “kids screaming on planes” algorithm on social media, so all I see are those articles.

So, yeah I’ve been on edge. As has my husband.

But we’re excited.

Is there a better, bigger word than excited? Enthusiastic? No, still not big enough. I don’t know. If there is, that’s how we feel.

We know the travel aspect of taking a toddler and a baby overseas will be HELL and we’re going to hate every minute of it. We decided early on not to overthink the flight because that will only cause more headaches and anxiety—my latest stress is getting two kids through immigration on my own, as my husband can go through the citizen’s line at Heathrow—and that the last headache will be picking up our rental car. It’s all we have to get through.

And then we’ll have it.

Our Love Actually moment—the one I wrote about this time last year. And the tears we’ve shed while listening to Tim Minchin’s White Wine In The Sun will be for a different reason: happy instead of sad. All of this, all of the high anxiety and stress will be worth those first hugs and the utter joy we will feel when we walk into our family’s homes in England with our boys. Even though I’ll be right in the thick of it, part of me wishes I could experience it from the 300-level and see the scene from every angle. I want to see my husband’s face, as Wyatt meets his uncle—his namesake—for the first time.

Ugh. I can’t wait.

It will be the best Christmas. One we’ll always remember.

But pray we survive the flight.

<3