Unexplored Terrain • John Schlossberg x Reader

VI

After the week of the funeral we were scheduled to meet with leaders of the United Kingdom. Jack and I decided to take the kids with us. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge offered to take accompany us to Jack's Grandfather's memorial in Runnymede, and towards the end of the week were scheduled to make a slight detour on the way home to visit Ireland. 

The flight was a bit long, even for me (eight hours!), but the kids did pretty good for the most part. Caroline busied herself with playing "school" or something with her dolls, which involved a lot of her sending  her "students" to "ISS" for "cheating". She was staring to become a very imaginative little girl! John got pretty antsy, but eventually he fell asleep after watching Peppa Pig for what felt like years. 

The day after we arrived in London we met with the prime minister, and that was alright. Though I think he was more excited to meet the children than he was to meet with us. 

Later that day we took the kids to see the Crown Jewels and the Tower of London. Caroline absolutely adored the jewels, but I think John liked the guards and weaponry better. He kept complaining that he didn't want to look at all of this "girl stuff", and started crying when he felt like we had been there long enough. 

When we were heading back to our car to go back to the hotel, Caroline asked us if we could go ride the London eye. I think that's the last thing Jack or I expected her to say. She sort of has a fear of heights, in fact when I took her to visit the Washington monument last year she started crying when we reached the top. Even after I tried to explain to her that there was no reason to fret and tried to show her how pretty the view was, she still wouldn't have it.

I was a bit nervous, but she handled it like a champ! How fast a child can change in a year! It was very beautiful from the top, London seemed to dazzle in the evening glow of the setting sun. 

Afterwards it was pretty easy to put the children to sleep, although we had a bit of a problem when we couldn't find John's blanket. But thankfully daddy came to the rescue when he found it tucked inside his breath case. How it got there, I have no clue, I'm just glad we found it before we had a meltdown to deal with! 

The next day we had a meeting with prince Charles at Buckingham Palace for tea and a good old meeting to discuss relations between our two countries. 

After the meeting we met the duke and duchess of Cambridge and their children at the door. We rode in a limousine together to the memorial in Runnymede. 

It was quite the shock to see how big the Cambridge kids had gotten, I remember when they were all born! George was now 19, Charlotte was 17, and Louis 14! Caroline seemed to take a liking to Charlotte, which was really quite adorable. She held charlotte's hand the whole time, but John demanded that Jack hold him the whole time, which was pretty funny! 

We all left flowers at the memorial and then headed to Heathrow for a short flight to Ireland. 

The visit to Ireland went pretty well. When we landed at the airport there was a huge throng of people waiting for Jack on the tarmac. I let Jack go ahead and greet the crowd as I snuck the children out of the back of the plane. I got them situated in car seats and left them with their secret service agents for a few moments so that I could join Jack in greeting the crowd. 

What seemed like ten thousand handshakes later we joined the children in the car, and went in a short adventure around Dublin. People lined the streets so that maybe they would be able to catch a glimpse of us, which was endearing. Caroline and John watched in wonder, I don't think they had ever seen this many people come to watch their parents before. I wonder if they even had a coherent understanding of how important their father's job was. Anyhow, we went to visit the old Kennedy homestead in Dunganstown, which was very interesting. Jack and I took it as an opportunity to try to begin teaching the children about their family.