Trip - Day 2

Day two of our trip was pretty low key. It was Sunday, so we slept in a bit and looked for an 11:00 sacrament meeting to attend. We walked in, sat down, and looked around...everyone was latino. We happened to pick a Portuguese ward. It was a little comical. Of the two chapels in all of London, with 5 wards to choose from, we picked the foreign one. We were the only white people listening to a spaniard try and read a spanish talk in portuguese. At least Johnny could understand some of it.

After church we walked through Hyde Park to find a place to eat.

We stopped at a little sandwich shop. It was good, but I paid 7 pounds for a sandwich Drake could've made.

At least I was able to take some fun British pictures from where I was eating.

Next stop, the British Museum

This ceiling was crazy. Johnny is the small guy in the middle. See the stairs on the left? He's about to tear something in his foot when he climbs those, and he doesn't even know it yet...

...photo taken one minute after he put his foot down and yelled "Ow!", echoing all around us. He'd pulled a tendon in his foot and could barely put any weight on it. That was problematic, being day two of a 12 day trip.

And yes, Johnny has a man purse.

Kidding, its my camera bag that he carried the entire trip

(even though he was injured, he's great like that)

The museum was huge, but we stuck to the Egyptian stuff. I'm pretty fascinated by things carved in sandstone dating back to 3000bc

THE Rosetta Stone, I thought that was pretty exciting.

Time lapse, why? I don't know.

After the museum we walked around a bit - veeerrry slowly due to Johnny's limp - looking for an underground. I was ok walking slow, cause I could then take pics of cute London things.

How we rolled

Next stop, Tower of London

Nice outfit

After walking through the perimeter, we headed into this part of the castle to see the crown jewels. If I had a pound for every time Johnny used 'crown jewels' out of context I'd have about 14 pounds.

(photo from google, we weren't allowed to take pics inside)

British snacks

Into the armory.....

This was pretty impressive, I can't believe what they had to wear to fight. I'd be too lazy and say, "Cool, you want this land? Give me some cows and roasted peanuts and we'll call it a truce."

Chillin on a bench, letting Johnny recuperate a bit.

Before heading home, Johnny decided he'd better stop here to see if he could "rent" crutches, then take them to Paris in the morning.

They said no.

Trip - Day 1

To document the trip Johnny and I just took (and because I use this blog as a journal of sorts), I'm going to recap the whole thing one day at a time. Hopefully I can get this done while its still fresh in my mind!

Johnny and I left Denver Friday, April 15th at 1:00pm. My mother-in-law and little Drakie dropped us off at the airport and headed back to Colorado Springs to Gigi, Drake's great grandma, and the other boys.

We arrived in London at 10:15am on Saturday morning. The 8 hour flight wasn't awful, and luckily I had some anti-nausea medication that made me SUPER groggy, so we both slept quite a bit.

We hopped on a train from London Heathrow Airport and made our first stop (with luggage and all) in Chiswick. We did a bit of shopping then walked over to where Johnny's mom was lucky enough to live for a bit. This is where she called home!

It was such a beautiful area, with old rowhomes and these flowers in bloom EVERYWHERE.

This amazing building was converted into apartments, and must've been pretty fancy schmancy (as evident by the Ferrari, Porche, and Mercedes parked in the driveway).

As a thank you to her for watching our boys, we printed this photo on canvas for her to have in her home. It was a GREAT first stop!

We then hopped back on a train and headed to our hotel, the Mint Hotel near the Tower of London. Funny story: When we checked into the hotel and were taken to our room, it was a little dirty. There was an empty clothes box on the bed, a half opened bottle of wine on the table, and a dirty trash with a sock sticking out of it. Johnny called the concierge and wallah, we were upgraded to the suite of all suites! This room had a view of Tower Bridge and an iMac in each room (allowing us to Skype with the boys!). The bed was soooo comfy too.

We dropped off our bags and hit the road!

Here is the route we walked after checking in to our hotel:

First stop, Tower Bridge.

On our way to first stop, buying roasted peanuts...my mouth us watering just thinking about them. They were sooooo good.

Documenting first stop, 2:18 pm.

View from the bridge of our hotel room

After the bridge we wandered around looking for a place to eat, we were both starving and grumpy. We happened upon this: the oldest church site in all of London! Originally built in 606 ad, then rebuilt in 1212.

We FINALLY found a place to eat, and by the time we got in, sat down, and looked around us, realized it was a little more fancy than we had anticipated. It was traditional British food, and although it looked a bit odd (and cost a small fortune), tasted wonderful!

Now reenergized, we hopped on a train and headed over to Westminster Abby and Parliament.

This was all we saw of them getting ready for the wedding the next weekend. (No, we didn't know the Prince was getting married when we booked our trip or we would've tried to be there!)

Big Ben

...and after walking ten miles around London, we made it back to our room to this view...

then went to bed.

Mothers Day

My Mothers Day was very simple. Got to sleep in a bit (though church was at 9, so not much), got a tomato plant in Relief Society, visited my Grandma, and relaxed at home.

My favorite part of the day was getting this from Drake, that he made in Sunbeams.

His three different responses when asked why he loves me:

My favorite response was, Cause I do! Like he's thinking, duh, why do you keep asking me, I just do ok?

Boys in Bow Ties

I have lots of things to blog about, but can't find the energy to get around to them.

For now, I will show you some bow ties, and two handsome boys sporting them.

A friend sells them on her Etsy shop (Modish Podish) and gave me the ties in exchange for photos that she could put on her site. The boys love them and I think they're so cute! It was a great trade.

"Bushendo"

My child never stops surprising me with the knowledge he picks up random places. For example, today we left for Colorado and as I'm driving I hear "Mom look!!! A bushendo!", "What Drakie?", "It's a bushendo!!!". I looked at the sky then scoured my brain thinking back on dozens of cartoons Drake watched that week. "oh! Do you mean a crescendo Drakie?!", "Yeah, a bushendo from Little Einsteins! It means louder music!". Mystery solved, and now I want to get him signed up for piano, violin, and - at his request- trumpet lessons. Or maybe instead I'll just keep putting on Little Einsteins.

Time for a vacation!

Heading to Colorado to leave the kids with these women:

Then taking off with the hubby to:

&

and to quote my favorite song

"...Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday

We-we-we so excited"

Snowy Sunday

Its been a crazy (or cratheeee, as Bubbs says) April! Its been soooo snowy. Last Sunday we woke up to this:

So we grabbed these three....still in their jammies...

..and headed up the canyon.

We decided to head across the lake to see the whole mountain range, and let the boys climb around the car. We filled cups with (clean) snow, and listened to General Conference.

It was a fabulous Sunday Morning!

On a side note, doesn't Con look soooo conceded? Hahaha