You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you...

...but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.

  By Frederick Buechner, writer and theologian

Here's a box of tissues because this is going to be soppy. I can feel it coming on. (Sniff, sniff.)

 I can't wait until next week.

Next week we're off to the Dominican Republic. As far as I'm concerned (she lied) it could be Wolverhampton in the rain. The important thing is that for the first time in so very long, we'll all be together - that's to say me and Pete and our three boys, Tim, Jamie and Laurie.

And for the first time EVER we'll all be together with Breanna who's marrying Jamie on Thursday, and with Irene, Laurie's fiancée, expecting a baby in July.

And we'll be together with lots of Breanna's family and friends too.

Jamie and Breanna live in upstate Ontario. Laurie and Irene (currently) live in Whistler, BC - and we live in the south of England, so we don't get to see each other very much. God bless Skype and Facebook, I say.

Oh it's going to be such a magic week...