A few days in London with Abby!

 Abby, Jake, and I bought London Passes for a day and squished in as many tourist sites in as we could on Thursday (April 5).  Our visitors have to get their fair share of sightseeing in!  My cute friend Sheri watched the kids so we could have a day just for the grown-ups.

We took the tube to Trafalgar Square, stopped at Pret for some hot chocolate, walked down to Big Ben, and then headed over to Westminster Abbey.  After browsing inside for a while we went over to the Tower of London to check out the Crown Jewels, then to Tower Bridge for a tour, went and hiked to the top of The Monument to the great fire of London, walked over to St. Paul's Cathedral to check out the inside (found out just yesterday that it's free for military members... good to know for the future!), checked out Kensington Palace (some of Diana's dresses are on display there now!), and finished the day off with some deliciousness at the Kensington Creperie.  Phew.  Crazy but fun day!  I wish I would have worn my running watch to see how far we walked!

Inside tower bridge, one of the sections talked about stunts that have been performed here.  Kind of interesting!  A red city bus was caught at the top when the bridge started opening one day, so the bus driver had to floor it and jump to the other side.  Crazy.  People have jumped the bridge on motorcycle and have flown under by plane, too.  Thought this picture was cutie.

Pretty sure Westminster is the coolest abbey to visit, so I like it when visitors come and I get to go again!  

Abby and I in front of Westminster..

And with some cops.  I like the hats the policemen wear around here!  

And a side note, last month in France this jacket  hid my baby bump quite nicely.  I've totally popped out since then though!  Baby bump or grandma belly going on under there for sure.  Got to love that.

The Monument to the fire of London.  We hiked to the top of that thing and had a look around.  All 311 steps.  It was built between 1671 and 1677 to celebrate the rebuilding of the city.  Cool view from the top!

 

St. Paul's Cathedral.  And another random tidbit... I didn't realise until recently that Diana and Charles were married here.   For some reason I thought they were married at Westminster like most other royals.

Kensington Palace.  First time Jake and I have gone inside this place.  This is where William and Kate have decided to live.  I was excited to see more of Diana's dresses at the dress exhibit going on now.  There were dresses that weren't on display when we saw some of her others at the fashion museum in Bath.  It was fun seeing where Queen Victoria was born and grew up, too.
That's a statue of Victoria behind us.  Hard to see since the sky was so cloudy!

A few of Diana's dresses...

Some of Victoria's dresses were there too.

Jake pretending he's wearing cool royal man clothes...

The gardens.

Couldn't end the day without some Creperie!  I want some more now.  

 

We took the kids along for our second day in London.  We started with a bus tour around the city, followed by a stop at Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard.

After watching a little of that, we headed over to St. James park.  We were prepared this time and brought peanuts to feed the squirrels.

The birds were eating the peanuts whole.  Don't know how or if they manage to digest that!  Luke was excited when he figured out how to get them to eat from his hand like Jake.

Abby decided to give squirrel feeding a go.  One ran up her leg!  haha.  She was done after that.

Sort of freaked her out!  It was too funny!

We met up with Rachel Niu, one of Abby's good friends, at Harrod's for lunch.  She was in London visiting some of her modeling buddies.  Fun to see her!

On the tube.  Kind of a blurry picture, but I liked it.

Before heading home we did a boat tour on the river, finished our tour bus route, and had a tasty dinner.
My cuties.  I hope the 2 littles remember some of the fun times we've had in London after we leave England!

Fun day.  Next up is our day at Windsor Castle.

A little of Bury St. Edmunds, Lavenham, & Cambridge

On Monday and Tuesday Abby, Ella, and I were off to play while the boys were at work/school.  When I first moved here, a friend took me to Harriets in Bury St. Edmunds as a little intro to tea time here.  It's a cute little tea house.  I thought Abby needed to check out their scones too.  It's a cute place!  After lunch we walked around the shops and the Abbey Gardens.

Ella has to put her own clotted cream and jam on her scones.  It drives me nuts watching her make a gooey mess on her scone, but as long as she isn't making everything else messy, I let her have at it.

 A little of the Abbey gardens..

The day after Bury we went to Lavenham.  Super cute little crooked town not too far from our house.  I have a lot of pictures on the blog of Lavenham already, so I'll just post a couple of pictures.

Luke had school on Wed, but the rest of us went to Cambridge for the day.  Another of my favorite places.   It was pouring when we first got there, but we got lucky and it cleared up enough to go punting and browse the market.

Abby and Ella @ Kings College..

On the river!

Checking out treats at the market.  Got some sour balls for Abby to try.  Pretty sure they are the most sour treats ever made.

Another Stonehenge Trip

 First visit to Stonehenge that we actually had decent weather!  Abby lucked out.  It's been snowing, raining, or just plain freezing when we've gone before.

I liked this one of Jake and Ella!

Abby Comes to Visit!!

Abby got to come and play for a couple of weeks, and we had a blast!  We picked her up on Sat. March 31 at Heathrow and she left on Sat. the 14th of April.   In 2 weeks we showed her around Bath, Stonehenge, Bury St. Edmonds, Lavenham, Cambridge, London, Windsor, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Keukenhof, Lisse, and Bruges.   I had been looking forward to going to the Netherlands during tulip season and was so happy that she could come along with us!  We crammed so much in while she was here.  I'm going to have to do a few posts.  Here goes the first!

A few pictures from our time in Bath!  We went straight from the airport to Bath and stayed until the next evening.  Took advantage of staying at the Cotswold centre again!

Dinner at Soto Soto.  Yum!

We have pictures of the Pultney bridge from other trips to Bath, but here's another just for fun from this trip.

Abby and I at the Circus

The kiddos have an obsession with finding "perfect sticks" everywhere we go lately.  Jake likes to join in, too.

We had fun walking around, browsing shops, trying new treats, and new tasty restaurants.   ♥ Bath.

Say Cheese. Easter 2012

9:30 Church + Running late = barely enough time for a few snaps of Easter kiddos on a sugar high.

And Abby got this next one.  We've been having so much fun with her here and I don't think we're going to let her leave at the end of the week!  More on our adventures soon!  Happy Easter!