And on the 14th day, there shall be rest....

Greetings Dear Friends from the English region of Wiltshire!
I certainly should have taken a break before now but as most of you know, I am not one to sit down until everything is DONE. Just plain DONE. This afternoon is the first time in 14 days that I have taken the afternoon off and rested. Boy, it's quiet around here. The kids are napping, my mother is storming through the Salisbury Cathedral and Clark is driving home from a busy 9-flight work week in Wales. Last night, as my mom and I were unpacking the very last dish in the kitchen at 1am, I had this sense of "A-Ha". Peace. Tranquility. This place I can call "My Own" for now. I am Home. It was beautiful. You know that moment...When all the sudden the hustle and bustle just subsides. It was dreamy. I am thrilled to say that I am 'in love'. In love with this land, this house, this village, this area, these people. So let me tell you a little bit about where we are spending this amazing season of our lives....or at least what little I know so far....
This Land...as a Southern lady from Georgia would say, "Goodness, Gracious, it sure is pretty!" How can one describe it? Let me give it a whirl... though September here is their "4 Week Summer", it's cool-cool in the morning. Not sure what it is in the British preferred Celsius but in Fahrenheit it's around a brisk 50. It is stunning. Cool breezes, crisp, and I mean CRISP clean air. My favorite part of the day is waking up and opening up our bathroom window that offers the most glorious view of rolling hills, a small cattle and chicken farm (rooster and all) and miles and miles of wheat fields. Yes, friends, Cindy Childers has gone country! And I LOVE it!! The streets are narrow especially for driving, hedged in by tall lush green bushes that are meant mostly for privacy. I just drive past wondering, "What kinds of things are all these people up to?" You know me - I want to meet them! Don't hide! One of my favorite things is the abundance of horses where we live. Everything is about horses here. Kids take lessons early, people ride them down the streets, even to the pubs (at least in little villages like ours). There is a herd of horses just across the street and down a bit from our house...the kids think this is so cool. Living "out in town" as one says, we are truly experiencing the life of an Englishman/woman. I must say, I had to trust Clark to pick out our house and I couldn't be happier.
Our home.... It is two-story, 5 bedrooms plus an office. (But all you can do in the office is turn around.) We have a guest bedroom set up for all of you; as well as another room with a double bed in case you come with your kids in tow. The kitchen is relatively small by American standards but my hubby put in extra cabinets in the laundry room so I could house all my kitchen "bits and bobs" AND food! We live in a cul-de-sac of sorts and on our left are David, Rachel, Emily and Imogen, they are super nice and I'm hoping Emily can babysit for us. On our right are Laura and Marc and not sure their kids names (I think they are in boarding school). Marc serves in the British Army and is currently home on a 2 week respite from Afghanistan but will be home for good at Christmas. They too are awesome and I think we've managed to pretty much 'come in with a bang' as us Childers' folks often do. They don't really know yet what's hit them...standby... :)
...About our Village, Newton Tony... Remote, farm country, incredibly nice, nice people, slightly affluent (not us), cozy and the people are very friendly. It's as charming as they come. There is a famous local pub in the village called Mallet Arms that is older than the United States and is a popular hangout for the residents here and folks from far off. It has some of the best food for pubs and the one meal I've eaten there so far was YUM-MY! We've already been invited by some neighbors, Maxine and Bob to their Halloween party so we are excited to meet even more people. Clark has already made a footprint for himself here before I came and knows all the goings-ons about who hunts what and where and when. He's a little leary though to go with one group because they shoot while riding horses and he's not sure he won't make a fool of himself trying that out. You know how those Texas boys like their tree stands. Across the street from Mallet Arms is Liam and Natalie's school. (Yes friends, this town is small :) Their school is as precious as you can get. As my mom says, It's very "School House". Natalie's pre-school, the "Puffins" meets in the village town house and she goes MWF for 1/2 days with Miss Jill and several other little tots. (sidenote: My girl is completely potty trained - Yee-Haw!) Liam is in Reception which is the same as American Kindergarten. It's hard to believe, but they start Kindgertan here at FOUR years old! He is going 5 days a week for 3 hours. He could go all day but mummy is just not ready for that. They both LOVE their classes and their teachers so that was so nice to have such a smooth transition with schooling.
...This area...Newton Tony is about 5-10 minutes from Clark's royal air force base in Amesbury England. For the Brits, this is a very easy bike ride as so many choose to ride their bikes to work. Go Clark! Stonehenge is about 10-15 minutes away and Salisbury is about 20. I have done a good share of driving the last two weeks and almost feel like a pro now driving on the left side of the road. It took a bit but you just have to act like you know what your doing and then people actually think you live here. There is alot to do around here and I'm sure now that the moving dust has settled i'll have more interesting stories to share. I guess in order to blog about Life you have to Live it first!
...Last but not least, the People. The British people on the surface can tend to appear more reserved and less gregarious than us Americans but they are wonderful. I do tend to be on the extraverted side (duh) and wanting to talk and meet and chat but what I've found is that they do to. Surprisingly so. You will have to come here and see for yourself. I'm trying to think about how to describe in general the people I've met so far and I'm finding it's hard to choose the words just as it would be if someone from another country came to America and met a cross-section of 100 different Americans. It's just too hard to do. Wonderful that life is like that actually. How boring would life be to only hang out with people that share your own culture. However, in light of that, I must add that the other morning in my quiet time I was feeling a little homesick and missing my friends and just wanted to talk to somebody who I didn't feel like I had to audit my words (because so many American words are not appropriate here) and I asked God to help me have a heart for them and to fall in love with this land of people. I said something like, "How can you help me love them like they are my own from home?" The words from John 21 quickly came to my mind, "Do you love me? Feed my sheep." I am certain God has a sense of humor and I began to laugh. What? Really? Cook for them? Me? I guess I would say I'm an Ok cook, no extraordinare, but I do love to share food with friends. And maybe that's His way of saying that's how I'll begin to get to know them. I guess the saying is true, "To know them is to love them." God is so good. He always hears us when we ask. Guess I've got to go get the conversion chart out that goes with this oven and see if I can't whip something up.
Love to you all,
Cindy

Baptism by Fire!

WE MADE IT!!! We are officially in England and it's even more beautiful than I remembered. It is 11:02pm here in the UK which means it's 6:02 on the East Coast. No worries about me not falling to sleep at 6 o'clock at night though because I have had I think a total of 6 hours of sleep in the last 72 hours. Sleep is inevitable -momentarily. I will try and make this brief since I can barely keep my eyelids open but I just wanted to let you guys know we made it safe and sound and how happy we are to be here! It was not an easy day but whoever said 'easy' was the funnest way to go. My prayers from the get-go were as follows: Safe Travels, Timely flights, that ALL my luggage would make it, and that the kids would be great and that God would give us favor with whomever we needed so that everything would go smoothly. Ironically, nothing happened like I had wanted or expected it to but God answered ever single request with an affirmative "yes" but went about it completely differently than I would have imagined. It all began when we got a call Friday morning as we were literally walking out the door at 9:30am for the airport that our Delta flight from Atlanta to Newark was delayed by what ended up being 4 hours because of bad weather in Newark. We decided to head on to the airport where we checked our bags and managed to miraculously get out of paying overage charges for 5 out of 6 "Heavy" bags as well as extra bags since they didn't consider Clark's military "Orders" my "Orders which meant we surpassed the suitcase allotment. We then headed to our gate which we realized once going through security and walking to the very other end of the Atlanta airport that our flight was further delayed and had moved to again another further away part of the airport. So here we went, me, my mom, Liam, Natalie, 2 large car seats, one stroller, one rolling carry-on suitcase, a duffle bag, 2 purses and 2 kids' backpacks and two kids in tow. Yikes! We looked like the most ridiculous pack-mules. It was painful but hilarious at the same time. Y'all know I don't know how to travel light. So once we got on our Newark flight we were certain we would miss our connection to London because our flight was to land 1 hour after the other took off. We land in hopes that maybe we'll get on the later flight out that night but once we deplaned there was a lawyer gentleman guy who I guess saw how ridiculous we looked and he literally helped us cart all our stuff to the other side of Newark's airport in hopes to get us on a good flight that night and not allow us to be stuck in NJ for the night. We quickly learn at the counter that our 6:30pm flight has not taken off but does so in 17 minutes-yes, 17 minutes. Some lady directs us to the first class check in and the man who I'm expecting to say, "good luck, try again later." Says with out me saying hardly anything, 'Come with me'. He then proceeds to take us to the front of security says, "Run to your gate I'm going to have them hold your flight." We run (a good 5 min run) and arrive out of breath and they say, "Are you the Childers...get on!" As the lady is checking our passports, I turn and see these 2 men (angels)standing there in airport uniforms. They say to me out of the blue, "are you from Atlanta and did you have 6 bags?" I said, "Yes, sir, why?" He said, "because we just put all 6 on this flight." My mouth dropped and I said, "But we JUST got off our flight like 8 minutes ago." He said, "Yes, we're good." I was amazed. I turned around and they were gone. We have a wonderful and uneventful flight into London. We land and get our pack-mule set up going and as we are getting in line for customs (which is no less than 250 people deep), a gentleman comes up and says, "Hey, come follow me." He takes us around past all the people to the front and as I walk past these people embarrassed, he hollers out loudly, "Coming through, celebrities coming through." I was SOOOOO embarrased and wanted to hide but what can you do when you are toting all that stuff and trying to catch up with the customs agent. We swiftly get through customs and go to get our luggage. We end up now not only with our pack-mule items, but also now TWO seperate "suitcase rolly-things." So tell me "How are we (me and my mom going to now push THREE giant things. A wonderful man who had worked there 30 years sees us from afar and without us even saying a word or looking in his direction he marches over and proceeds to take 2 of the carts and says, I will help you get to your husband. And so he does! So how about that for a whirlwind of a day. It was so stressful I can not even begin to tell you how I felt all day but in the end I realized how good God is and he wanted to show me that He can make anything happen even in the midst of chaos. One last story...maybe the best. Clark picks us up at the airport but we have to drive both our new truck and his work rental car home (long story later) so he says, "Come on honey, you can do it, your not tired and you can drive on the other side of the road,... a stick right" "Yeah right! Is what I'm thinking." I reluctantly accept the offer knowing somebody has to now make this long trek back to our house. Well not sooner than 10 minutes down the road does Clark loose me on a round-a-bout and whooosh he is out of sight and my mom and I are L.O.S.T. in England, driving a crazy car, in a crazy place AND my cell phone doesn't work because I forgot to have AT&T allow me to make calls once I arrived here. So we proceed on knowing that there is nothing I can do about it but drive and just hope I can kind of remember roughly how to go these remaining 200 miles. About 30 minutes down the road, their beside me rides up my sweet darling husband who had waited for us who knows back where and now had been going 100 mph realizing we were up ahead. What a ZOO! So our first day in England has been a busy but memorable one and you can see why I must get some shut-eye. I love you all dearly! ZZZzzz, Cindy

Can't turn back now...

Dear Friends! How I have missed you! It's been 15 days since I've written a thing and I have thought of you no less than 15 times (at least). I must say that my lack of updates has not been lack of news (whether mundane or sublime) but because I have developed this fear of writing and not a soul reading this or even worse not caring one iota what I've written. So with that true confession laid out on the table I realize I must get back to this thing or how the heck will I get any better at it and update you sweet souls on what the latest and greatest is with the Childers' clan heading East to the UK (thank you so much for those have been asking!) Here's your update....

We have tickets! Yep, that's right. This crew (Me, Liam, Natalie and my mother, Janice) are all England-bound in just 6 short days. That date is Friday, September 11th to be specific. Now we are not going to go and get all "superstitious" and think crazy things. But rather, we are trusting and praying that our flight will be uneventful, that the children will sleep the entire leg from Newark, NJ to London (Heathrow) and that we will land on September 12th fully rested and ready to set our footprints in the proverbial sand of our new home, Amesbury, England. OH, how glorious that day will be! Hopefully, Clark will be there with bells on. Or at least a nice hot cup of Starbucks. :)

On a second note. Which leads me to the "Title" of this post. Natalie Annabelle has most recently, 3 weeks and 1 day to be exact (but whose counting) begun a new world all to her own - that of potty training. This Mommy only has one word to say at this point, "UGGGH!" But you know what, you just can't stop what's been started. At this point, she knows exactly what the following mean: "2 M&M's for peeing, 5 M&M's for pooping (can I say that, oops, I just did), Smiley stickers for #1 and Princess stickers for #2, the urge to go means tell Mommy or Grandma and run to the potty, and finally and most importantly she knows what her new cute Gymboree undies look and feel like and most importantly where mommy tries to hide them (I mean, really, pull-ups are so much easier). I, somehow, have forgotten all the fun doing this with Liam was. But in the car earlier today, I had an epiphony. Here's how the story goes...

Back in Virginia Beach, earlier this spring/summer, I had the priviledge of hosting 15 ladies at my home for a bible study. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for what God would do to my soul during those eleven weeks. Though strangers to a few, acquaintences and good friends to many before we began, I treasure these ladies more than words can say. They will always be near and dear to my heart. There was just something amazingly unique and special about that group that tendered my soul as we studied Beth Moore's "A Heart Like His: The Study of David". During those eleven weeks, the LORD undid my heart and created in me a huge hole for His very own One. This was all very well and Good. But now herein lies the problem. Literally, just a few short days after the close of that study, we began the tireless task of packing, cleaning, selling stuff, saying many farewells, moving, visiting family and friends in multiple states and all this busyness did what busyness often tends to do and that is crowd out God. For the eleven weeks of that study, I lived and breathed 1 and 2 Samuel. I mean, I spent morning, afternoon and evening with King David and if you hadn't told me otherwise, I would have considered him my best friend. I would even wake up finding myself having conversations about him and things I'd learned through his life example. So I say this, not to say that I'm crazy (or at least I hope I'm not) but to just be real with you that these past 7 weeks have been tough and I miss all that quiet, focused time in the Word. I know in England I may have more quiet time that I can bare but for now I am craving it like nothing else. It's in those quiet times, when I wake up before the sun rises, before those little footsteps come dancing in that God speaks so tenderly to my soul and just makes things, well, better. I have seen what Goodness God brings and just like with Natalie's potty training, there is now "No turning back".

"Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him." --Psalm 34:8

I love you all dearly and will keep you updated as we land next week in our new home! Please keep us in your prayers. Be blessed, Cindy