Hassells in the Highlands

We are on our way! We woke at 2:15 AM, were at the airport by 4:15, and took off at 6:30.  This is us at 5:30 this morning. We look pretty good for only 4 hours of sleep. We flew from Tri Cities to Salt Lake City, where ee are currently amusing ourselves for 6 long hours while we wait for the next flight. We will fly from here to Amsterdam, then fly to Inverness, and then drive 2 hours to Thurso. We should be there by 1-2 pm tomorrow (their time-which is 8 hours ahead of our time). Yesterday was a whirlwind. We got up at 5 am and started working on all the little things that needed to happen by the day's end. The packers came at 10 AM and wrapped and boxed all our stuff before noon, but seemed to take all afternoon for them to get it all into the crate. We have been working long and hard to get ready for this. There have been a million details to track and lots of things on our personal list of things to do before leaving. Mike especially had a lot on his plate...

For those of you who knew, you will be relieved to see that the passports arrived today. Whew!  I, personally was not stressed about this, but here is the story behind the passports. We had to drive to Yakima last week to have our bio-metrics done. (Turns out, bio-metrics is fingerprinting). For some reason, we had to have this done, plus a picture taken with no jewelry. They gave us the completed paperwork, which we put into a Fed Ex envelope and over-nighted to the legal team handling getting the visa in Houston,Texas. Once they validated the package, they sent it to the British Consulate in DC, who, after 3-5 days were to add a vignette to the Visa (which is a 30 day work visa pending getting our equivalent of a green card).  The consulate then sent it back to Houston who verified correctness and then Fedex'd it to us.  So, from Friday fingerprinting at the immigration office to the following Saturday, we got them back - totally amazed - Mike was a nervous ne...

So the Hassells are going to Scotland. Who could have predicted that?  Mike was asked in January to consider working at Dounreay, Scotland, for a year. Dounreay is the name of the nuclear power site in the northern most part of Scotland.  Being that the kids are all now on their own, it seemed like a fun adventure - and a way for us to travel to many of the places that have been on our bucket list - mainly Italy. Scotland is a great jumping-off place for Europe.  So after months of talk and back and forth, things finally started to become official in April. And now the Visas have been applied for, we have had biometrics done (which turns out to be fingerprinting), and the packers are coming next Tuesday. And we will be wheels-up at O-bright-thirty out of Pasco on Wed, May 31. Oh - and the trip was extended to 18 months.  Is this really happening??? We are gathering the stuff to take with us and this is the gathering room. Most of it is clothes. Warm clot...