We travelled to another country. And we didn't buy a return ticket.

A couple of trains, a hotel, a plane, and a taxi, and we found ourselves at our AirBnB in Nacka, near Stockholm. No big deal, right!?

It was a lot of fun on the journey - all three kids were so fun to be with. Even William was talking excitedly about going to Sweeeeeden! They were really good for the whole journey too - it was over 24 hours of travelling, and they stayed bright and chirpy throughout.

Waiting at Gillingham train station

The plane leg of the journey was obviously the highlight. Elanor got singled out for a full-body scan, which wasn't her favourite... she got pulled apart from the rest of us, and found it all a bit intimidating, but she recovered soon after. Even waiting around the airport for ages, the kids managed to have fun and didn't get upset about the wait. I don't even recall hearing the words, "I'm booooorrred" while we were there.

That thing is going to throw itself at the sky with us in it

The whole journey was a little surreal. It didn't feel at all like we were leaving permanently. I don't think it helped for me that I'd taken that exact train journey many times before for Thales training, so it didn't even feel particularly out of the ordinary. We'd planned the journey really thoroughly - Esther might take exception to the "we": I may have been planning the journey when I should have been cleaning the house... Woops. Still, I can argue that the planning paid off because we basically didn't have any hiccups. The train was quiet, so we had plenty of room even with all our cases and whatnot. We didn't miss any connections or anything, and we found where we needed to be to get to our B&B at Gatwick.

The few lessons we did learn though (like getting stuff ready for the security screening before you're standing at the front of a long queue of people...), Esther and I kept saying to ourselves, "On the way back we'll have to..." It was strange having to keep catching ourselves and remembering that there won't be a way back. At least not for a good while.

Me with a super-excited face and everyone else politely smiling. May be a recurring theme.

After we landed, and immigrated, we got a taxi to our AirBnB. So, in the weeks leading up to moving, I repeatedly asked the kids what they were excited for and nervous about. Snow and winter came up a lot. All three kids are seriously keen to see a real winter. We had assumed, travelling as we were in May, that we would be well into Spring by the time we moved to Sweden, and it would be six months or more before the kids had a realistic chance of seeing any snow. And then, during that taxi journey, we got to drive through a bona-fide snow storm. Elanor was about as excited as I've seen her in her life. James, surprisingly, wasn't so much. Turns out he was also excited for summer, and was worried that winter was forever in Sweden. William was asleep...

Elanor thinks Sweden is soooooo amazing

It's a moment that will stick with me for a long time. Apparently this has been the coldest spring in over 50 years, and a week after we arrived the temperature got up to the mid 20s. The timing was just perfect.

A snowstorm especially for us, to say, "Hej, och välkommen till Sverige!"