Number 111

Took the boys to one of the escape the room places today. We had a blast AND we saved the world from a deadly virus, tyvm.

Here we are outside the CDC:

Month 110

😎 😛 😜

UK2016 Part 3b: London

Catch up on my blog posts about our trip here!

So, where were we? Thursday morning, I suppose. It was our last day in London all together, as George had plans to go to Canterbury on Friday and meet up with a friend. Linus wanted to go to a castle, so we toyed with the idea of going to Windsor Castle, but getting there and back would have taken up too much of the day, so we decided to hit Hampton Court Palace instead.

On the tube

On the train

It was only about half an hour by train, so not bad.

Sorry to interrupt my recap of our trip to the UK, but it’s the fourth of the month, so that can only mean one thing…

I can’t tell you how tempted I was to use this pic though. ❤

UK2016 Part 3a: Ye Olde London Towne!

Read about Wales here and Cambridge here and here

So, after an agonizingly long coach ride, we made it to London!

We left off on December 22 with Rachel and I doing our part to rid the world of wine and cheese. On to the 23rd…

Read about our time in Wales here.

Wednesday morning, the boys and I caught the train to Cambridge. I was nervous about the journey because I had three boys and two suitcases to deal with and we had to not just switch trains in London, but switch stations by way of the Underground. But not to leave you in too much suspense…it was fine. (George’s journey the next day, by contrast, did not go so swimmingly, but that’s not my story to tell.)

Rachel (Gareth’s sister) picked us up at the train station and we headed to a shopping center to meet up with her boys (Dan, 13, and Ethan, 9) and Pat, their grandmother. The boys were so excited to see Dan and Ethan, and it was really cute when they saw each other and were all shy for about 12 seconds. (You might remember, they visited New Orleans back in May and the boys became fast friends.)

A real British mall! Looks….just like an America mall.

The streets of Cambridge all decked out for the holidays

Pretty!

uk2016-50 — The boys at the cricket/dragon/cockroach clock

We were going to be experiencing something extremely British that evening – a panto! Before showtime, we wandered a bit around Cambridge, getting a snack and seeing some of the sights.

We got home yesterday from our epic trip to the UK, and buckle in because I have a lot of pics and stories to share. I’m going to break up my posts into the three places we went, so let’s get started!

The trip started off with an enormous amount of stress, when I got a text that our flight to Houston was delayed. The delay would mean we would miss our flight to Heathrow. Um, not an option. I got on the phone with United, and after 40 minutes of being on hold, we got put on an earlier flight to Houston, which would get us there in plenty of time to catch our flight to London.

uk2016-1 — Waaaaaiting and waiting and waiting at the airport

But then that flight kept getting delayed, to the point where again, we were going to be in danger of missing our connection. Fortunately, the flight took off with some time to spare, and we landed in Houston. And sat and sat and sat on the tarmac. My blood pressure was rising a bit more every moment, until finally we got off with a few minutes to get to our next gate. Read More

9 years old!

9 years old.jpg

Inside because it rained all day. Hard to get this one because they were a tad tired after last night’s slumber party. (Finally went to sleep around 1, only to be up for the day by 6:30. When are they going to sleep like teenagers already?

But I had to use some hardcore emotional manipulation (and Minions on Netflix) to get them to “smile” for this picture. Whatever works.

Christmas card attempt, take 1

A cute picture, to be sure. But Miles has on dirty socks, Linus is standing on his toe knuckles, and I had to do a lot of terrible photoshopping to remove the reflections in the glass. I think we’ll just take a family picture closer to the holidays and maybe (gasp!) not send out cards this year at all. We’ll see.

In case you’re wondering how I got those adorable smiles…

This is Beau. I might have to hire him for the monthly pics.

New camera/new phone

Got a new phone. That has a really nice camera.

After a few weeks of waiting and using my shattered phone, my shiny new rose gold iPhone 7+ arrived. I debated for a while between the 7 (ideal size) and 7+ (fancy fun camera) and the fancy fun camera won out.

And I’m so pleased! Look at these photos – the left photo is “normal”, the right has the “portrait” mode on (blurry background from a shallow depth of field but it’s all computer generated.) None of these have been edited, btw. Straight off the camera.