All her bags are packed

4:30 am!

It's always been a traveling family. With three active daughters in a big world. Everyone has been in the same country for three weeks -and it's been more than two years since that happened. In the past, I was a student in Switzerland, we spent a significant whack of time in Maine, for six years my job had me traveling a lot in five continents. So none of this is dramatically different.

Except that it's always different. #1 is on her way to Australia (not for the first time) and then on to NZ with her lovely husband to spend a year seeing how it works out.

She is the noisy one. She was born with the cord round her neck and her arm raised in a "Power to the People" salute. She was the one who ran the major celebrity studded charity event while still in school. The one who may occasionally be numerically challenged, but has a flair for literature and has two good degrees from English universities. The one who found herself in what was described to me as "the most fun job in the Civil Service"! (More traveling, but this time with drivers and diplomatic lounges in airports.) And gave it all up to follow a dream.

The taxi has arrived and she's off!

All my bags are packed I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin' it's early morn
The taxi's waitin' he's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die

(The last line is not - in all fairness - totally accurate. But we will miss her!)