So Tara, first of all I can’t believe the Gallery started over 4 years ago! FOUR years! It feels like yesterday and it is scaring me a little to realise how quickly years are passing by… Anyway, I couldn’t NOT join in for the 200th! So here is about my 8am.

Since we have moved, our 8am is very different to our 8am in the UK. Life starts earlier in this country and in a very funny way, when I thought that I would find a lot of similarities with England in the US, I seem to find more with France. The early mornings resemble the early mornings of my childhood, so that’s one of those similarities.

When 8am used to be about still thinking about what to wear, while eating breakfast, now 8am is my moment.

The boys hop on their bus by 7.50 and C leaves for work. 8am is generally the time I go for a walk with the dog.

I have been very lucky so far to enjoy lovely, sunny walks (I KNOW, you Chicagoans are going to mention Winter coming, but it isn’t here just yet).

Apart from that day actually… miserable and very wet… and then came the realisation that our umbrellas, wellingtons and dog towels were on a boat and probably not planning to reach us for another few weeks… shake that thought!

No today instead it was good. Sunny, crisp but not cold (yet!) and we had just the right amount of squirrels to spy on.

Dog walking here is sometime a little frustrating, not so much for me but for Jasper really. You can not walk off the leash anywhere! Except at the dog park, for which you must have a license… We haven’t sorted that out yet and it might even not work out until we chop some balls!

Until then, we walk around the block, on the leash, which seems to satisfy him enough and somehow I am quite happy about the situation as I think that I would probably lose him to a squirrel anyway.