Howard Family: Did Ya Hear About the Ash Cloud?

Once upon a time, Travis and I were enjoying a romantic, luxurious, culturally stimulating river cruise along the Rhine (Note: I highly recommend this trip. Use Uniworld or Avalon!) . . . And then the Icelandic volcano, lovingly known as Eyjafjallajökull, erupted and spewed dangerous ash all over Europe--which stranded us in Switzerland for six days, post-cruise.

Now, before you role your eyes in lack of sympathy for any person stranded anywhere in Europe, please know that during this crisis, we had NO IDEA how long planes would be grounded or when we could secure a flight reservation (since we were fighting against 1,000s of other stranded passengers in a very unorganized first-come-first-serve transportation process) to return to our darling and distressed sons.

To make a long and stressful story bearable, I will summarize and say that we DID indeed get home, and in that fateful interim, we also got to spend two unexpected days in London (where Travis was pick pocketed on the tube, but that's another story entirely), and it was sunny and warm (our consolation for being marooned--or for being robbed?) Still, I love London and was really happy we had trip insurance to cover the expensive London hotel and the even more expensive Swiss spaghetti!

Another adventure (though more certain and probably less exciting) was our move to Gilbert, AZ, in June. We are in a very family-friendly town with cornfields next to Targets (so charming!), great schools, and a temple under construction. Our boys (Spencer, 15--with a driver's permit; Nathan, 13; Nicholas, almost 10;  Joshua, 5) have adjusted well. Travis is pretty busy working between 3 hospitals. I am doing some editing work from home. Spencer is becoming quite talented at the guitar. Nathan loves fencing! Nicholas just aced the gifted placement math exam. Joshua is almost literate and just lost his first tooth.