I’ve been feeling remarkably patriotic the past few weeks.  You see, I lost my freedom and it really had me down.  My husband was applying for a new visa to stay in the UK, which took way, way, way longer than we expected.  It was a 2-step process and the second step was to surrender our passports for the visa stamp.  Our lawyer informed us during step two that those lovely blue booklets might not be back in time for our trip to the US.

I'm an American living in England and spending 4th of July here for the first time in my four years here.  I decided I wanted to throw a 4th of July barbecue and needed to get all of the fixin's.  So, today I dragged my two lazy daughters out of bed to go to Borough Market with me.  Now they would have been much happier to stay at home in their pajamas all day, playing video games and eating junk food.  I, however, was on a mission.  So, about an hour later than planned, I got them on the train to London to get to Borough Market.