Our Week

I guess it has been a while since I have posted anything. I have decided to once again follow the example of my dear sister-in-law and start to put up more of our day to day life. I sometimes write a letter to send to all of my family each week, but I don't seem to be able to figure out how to do that and keep things up on here, so I have decided to combine them now. Good news is that you might not see that our life here isn't as exciting as some might think. Of course the bad news is that this blog may get a whole lot more boring.

Well I guess that in talking about this week I have to put in a few words of last week. A week ago on the Monday I got a call to tell me that an elderly lady in the ward had passed away. I knew that it was going to happen soon, she has been very sick for quite a while. She is an amazing lady, who really did as much as she could for just as long as her body would let her. She is wife to the patriarch. Anyway much of last week was spent trying to get things arranged for the reception after her funeral, and how to feed two hundred or so people. As well as trying to help her daughter who is my good friend through the week. Well that funeral took place on Monday of this week. It was a very long day at the church for my kids especially since it was right during their nap times. We ended up not giving them a nap and just putting them to bed early which seemed to work okay.

Tuesday I think I was still recovering from the funeral, and I don't that day. In the evening I had signed up for an exercise class. So when Brian got home I put on my workout pants and a t-shirt and my flip-flops (since it is a yoga type class and you don't wear shoes for it), as it didn't seem to be to bad of weather out, and headed out the door. As I left I notice that it was getting a little cloudy. About half way to the gym (which is only a five minute walk) it started to ran and it was a down pour by the time I ran into the gym. I was cold and wet. I waited a bit for the class to start and then when it did they were doing an aerobic warm up. I thought it was a bit weird but joined in. The teacher came up to me and told me that I couldn't stay in the class with my shoes, and that the class that I wanted was in an hour. So I left and started walking home. When I left the gym it was just lightly raining and by the time I got home it had stopped. I realize that I sometime complain about the weather here, but really does it need to go from sunshine to downpour back to sunshine in less then a half hour. That is the story of the weather for most of the week here.

Wednesday and Thursday I did some mystery shopping things but other then that I again didn't do much. Wednesday I did also hear of the passing of a elderly brother in the ward. His passing was very unexpected, and surprising to all of us.

Friday We got a babysitter and I went to meet Brian down by his work for his work summer party. It was very fun we all loaded onto a boat and went cruising the Thames for three and a half hours. They gave us dinner as well as all of the drinks that we wanted, which got some people a little crazy, and there was some dancing as well though very little that Brian and I could dance to. It was fun to be able to see the fun sights on the Thames. I was sorry that I didn't bring my camera as it would have been nice to take some pictures of the sights. The boat started and finished right below the Tower Bridge. We ate dinner with a couple who the man was from nearby SF so he was able to tell us something about the area we will be moving to and they also have a young son. It was fun because we really did have a lot we could talk about. We ended the night with one last dance in which we could look up and see the tops of the towers. It was a fun night even though I was a little worried since we usually skip out early on the parties.

That pretty much sums up the week, I didn't do much at all. Brian did have a very busy week as he had a course on presenting which he really did enjoy. He is still trying to catch up from our holiday though so he did still have lots of work to do and very little time to do it. He did have a few late nights, but I guess that have to happen sometimes.

There is however a reason that not much got done this week at it is this. . .

Last Saturday we started a puzzle. It is called a Wasjig. On the box we got this picture . . .

And the puzzle is what the man in the cart is seeing. We finished this puzzle on Saturday. It was a lot of fun and made us decided that me might have to get more of these some day. In the beginning especially it was much fun to try and figure out what was happening and why there were so many angry faces.

The funnest part of doing the puzzle was on Saturday as we let Lizzie sit up to the table with us. She started by taking random pieces and making her own little puzzle which was fun to watch. Then when we got so close to the end that we needed to be able to see all of the pieces we moved the puzzle closer to her and she actually put in one piece all by herself correctly. Afterwards we tested her and took out a few pieces for her to put back. She really seemed to enjoy this. Here is a few pictures of her doing the puzzle.

As for Jamie's big news this week, I started to realize that he was getting very close to starting to crawl and I had yet to take a video of how well he is getting around pre-crawling. Here is just a picture of him.

And here is a short picture of him getting around. He does backwards and around in circles very well it is just the forwards that we are waiting for.



However our wait came to an end on Sunday night. So here is a long video of Jamie's first crawling actions. He is finally moving forward and we are starting to get ever more fearful of the future and all of the things he will soon start to get into.



Well there is our week as boring as it may be. Hopefully I will start remembering to take my camera with me more often so that I can put up more pictures of the exciting stuff that we do and not just of puzzles.

Lizzie Strange Eating Habits

Lizzie's eating has continued to surprise us this week with what she wants to eat. Earlier I posted this picture of her eating a peach skin instead of the fleshy part.

Well things have continued on this strange, but good, path this week. She also ate some apple skin that had been removed from the apple, but not the flesh. She also really likes nuts (mostly cashews) and seeds and dried bananas. She begs for me to feed her frozen peas, but has complained if I thaw them. Last weekend I made some broccoli salad, Lizzie love it, except for the raisins, which I found a pile on of the side of the plate.

And this weekend she has been eating salad. It started Friday with a spinach and strawberry salad. and then today with just mixed lettuces, tomatoes and cucumbers. Here are some pictures I tried to take of her eating it.

Notice that she is eating the salad rather then bread or spaghetti.

We think that this strange eating started on our trip. One because that is the first time that she really eat lettuce. Also this weekend both salad had an oil and balsamic vinegar dressing on them. We suspect that she grew a taste for that after dipping her bread in it in Italy. After the salad was gone she did dip her bread in the left over dressing on her plate. I was very nice seeing her beg for more salad. She finished all of the leaves and so I thought that she wouldn't want anymore and I put the rest of the tomatoes and cucumbers on my plate to finish it off and she even begged for those from me. Not what I would expect from a girl who will be
22 months old tomorrow!!!!! Happy Birthday to her!!!

Brian thought that I should mention one more interesting thing that Lizzie loves to do while I'm talking about my crazy daughter. She loves to peal onions. When ever we are pealing onions, even if she has been in the other room playing with brother, she will come in and beg for them so that she can peal them. She doesn't however like to eat them though she has tried a few times after pealing them.

Mystery Shopping

I had an interesting experience this last week. I have heard of shops paying people to shop in their store and give their opinion. I have thought this would be a great job to bring in a little extra money, but I have never been sure as to how to do it, or how to sign up. Well this last week a reliable source gave me a place to sign up, retaileyes.com, so I decided to try it out. Wednesday I did my first job. I went out to breakfast with the kids at a little sandwich shop in the city. It was a really nice breakfast and then I have to fill out this really long survey answering all kinds of questions.

I did learn a few things from it though. Breakfast is not a good time to get out of the house with the kids. It isn't wise to pick a job where the transportation cost is greater then how much they are going to pay me. It was fun though riding into the city with Brian for once. On yes and my double stroller doesn't work on the underground, not a good idea at all, it was a good thing that Brian was with us. We did also get to spend a nice morning at one of my favorite parks afterwards.

I really did enjoy it though and am excited to be able to do another job. The jobs that are up now though I either have to order a coffee (some of them an alcoholic drink as well), or go to a health club that is further away then the one I already have a membership to. It is kind of a fun way to hopefully earn a little extra money. Well that is my fun story for the week now I will get back to working on my post with fun kid pictures.

Jamie is Nine Months Old!!!!!

Well my little man has now turned nine months old so I thought I would once again post some pictures of him and all of the fun things that he is learning to do.

Here is our English boy trying to crawl. He still just pushes himself backwards, but I don't think it well be to much longer before he starts going forward. That is going to be trouble.

He is also starting to figure out how to feed himself, though no very cleanly. This is him after a particularly dirty dinner. We felt he really needed a bath with that mess, and he hands were just as bad.

This is the new trick he was demonstrating in his bed tonight, pulling himself up. The bed isn't low enough that he can pull himself all of the way up so his legs are actually sideways/kneeling.

Here is the true fun part the videos of two other new tricks, clapping and walking while holding hands. This little boy is adorable.

Here are the two cute kids together. Lizzie has really taken to sitting on Jamie's lap. She used to like to have him sit on her lap, but now it is the other way around. I think it is so funny but Jamie doesn't seem to mind so I let her do it.

She does still like to give him hugs and will often come up and hug him or just laugh in his face while he is walking around. She also wants to help him walk around and will grab him and start pulling. She even tries to help him crawl by pushing his feet just like she sees mom and dad do. It is fun to see them together.

Well there are some of the exciting changes in the live of our little man. He sure is growing up and becoming so much fun.

I must say when I get blogging, I really go all for it. This is three posts after the kids have gone to bed. I don't always get much time for such fun so I have to make good use of the time I do have. I figure Sunday is a good day to to it as well since I am usually trying to figure out a good Sunday activity and this keeping a family history.

Have a great week!!!

Summer Is Finally Here

Before I start this blog I just want to mention one exciting thing that Brian and I did. Tuesday was Brian's birthday and I was able to give him two surprises. I decided on Monday that I should get my hair cut for his birthday (he usually has to encourage me to for months before I actually get around to getting it cut). So I called the sitter that I had arranged for that night and she said that she would be able to come earlier and I was able to get the appointment with the stylest that I wanted at the time that I wanted. It worked out very well. Here is a picture of my hair, after I washed it so it isn't done as nice as it was that night.


Long ago I had decided to take him to dinner at a restaurant called fifteen. It is the restaurant/project of Brian's favorite celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver. Brian cooks from his books every weekend, so he has really wanted to know how the master does it himself. Well really Jamie doesn't always work there. The project part of the restaurant is that it takes underprivileged kids and teaches them to be chefs. For more information you can look at it on www.fifteen.net/. We did have a great dinner there as well.

Now on to today!!!! Summer has finally arrived!!!! I know most of you are probably sick of the hot weather by now but here in England we are just barely getting any. Crazy isn't it. This week has been quite nice though. As a side note this week the school kids got out of school as well. Yesterday it was so nice the kids and I went to have a picnic in the park all by ourselves.

Today I decided to take our pink jeep ball pit and fill it with water for them to play it. They had a great time. Jamie was in it for abut an hour and Lizzie for almost an hour and a half before I made her get out so that they could get dressed and have lunch. Here are some of the pictures and movies that I took of them while they were playing!!!

Here they are just sitting in there.

Here is more of an action shot. Splash!!! Splash!!!! Splash!!!!

Lizzie decided that she wanted to get out at one point, but she kept reaching in to play with the water. Jamie on the other hand was more interested in the long grass on the other side.

I soon found out why Lizzie wanted to get out and it was because I took away the toys that she used to dump water on Jamie's head (see the movie below) and she wanted them back.

So here is the movie of Lizzie pouring water on Jamie's head. She always tries to do this in the bathtub and usually misses as she pours the water towards her. Here she figured it out though.

In the end Jamie was tired of being in the pool and let me hold him for awhile. I finally put him down and let him pull the grass since no one will mow it.

Here they are showing off how well they can splash!!!

Well after all the fun in the pool I decided to let the kids try ice lollies for the first time. Lizzie really seemed to enjoy hers. . .

Jamie however was not very impressed. He did take a couple licks though.

After all this fun it was lunch time, I thought, Jamie seems to have had other plans.

Well while Jamie was sleeping (in his bed, he did get moved), Lizzie was trying a new food. After her lunch I thought to give her some peaches as we had some fresh ones that needed eaten. I peeled one and gave her a few pieces. She tried one and gave the rest back. She then begged for the peel. So I gave her some and she enjoyed it. She ended up eating the whole peal and still wanted more. I am so very often surprised by what she will (or will not eat). Yes, that is peach peel in her mouth.

Well that is our day in the sun.
We really hope that we might have a few more this year, maybe even another week, two if we are lucky. Perhaps we will even have a month of nice weather. I should say though that our sunny days usually only get up to 25C (80) or so. If it gets to 30C (90) they start to think the end of the world is coming.

Well I hope that as you all get sick of the hot weather that you will remember us just hoping for one more day of bright, warm day.

Scotland

It is true after a day in London to unpack and pack and I even did my Visiting Teaching silly me, we were off again to Scotland.

Our reason for going to Scotland was that my mom was told that there is a castle in Scotland where all the Hunters in the whole world come from, we figured we had better see this castle. So that is the first thing that we did. Here are some pictures that we took of the castle.

It has now been turned into private housing and they only open it to the public one day a year. Sadly we didn't know this so we were unable to see the inside. We did get the number of someone to call for a tour, but he was also on holiday that weekend. We hope to still make contact with him and find out more about the castle and the family that came from there.

We didn't really know what else to do while in Scotland, but we decided to go into the highlands so we drove north. We didn't have a place to stay which I wasn't so worried about because we had done some well finding places on our other travels, but here it took about 2 hours to find a place to stay. It was not fun. We did end up in quite a nice place in a remote area.

Saturday when we went to lunch mom and Brian got talking a little to some people in the line. Sunday when we went to church we found out that the man was the bishop of that ward. What a coincidence. He was happy that he had been nice to them.

After church on Sunday we took the advice of the people that we were staying with and drove up in the hills. It was a beautiful drive though again blocked some by clouds. The destination was Inveraray Castle where some Duke still lives. We had a nice time playing in the area in front of castle, but decided it wasn't worth it to go in. I think that they used to have the gardens opened but this day they didn't, so we just got to play in the rocks.

Lizzie loved playing in the rocks!!!

Here are the people that I love just walking around!!!

Here are the silly people that I love in motion!!!

After our visit we went to a pub in the town for dinner. Shortly after arriving there we noticed welt looking like bumps on Lizzie's skin. Which was odd. But we ate our dinner and these welts on Lizzie continued to get worst so we called the NHS (National Health Service) helpline and talked to a nurse and ended up taking Lizzie in to see a doctor. We had a navigation device and so we put in the address to the hospital and were on our way. We passed the entrance to the hospital while following the GPS and when it told us we had a arrived there was no hospital in sight. We all had a bit of a laugh and then drove around a bit and found the hospital again. Lizzie was looking much better though. The doctor said that it was just an allergic reaction and to give her some antihistamine and she got better quickly.

Monday we decided to see what Glasgow was like. We tried to find a tall ship that the GPS said was around there somewhere. We never did find it as the instructions just kept leading us around in circles, and even across water according to it, or maybe we were suppose to turn before the bridge. We did drive by a nice big Square and some other things but it just wasn't that exciting of a place not knowing what to see so we started towards the airport with a castle to see on the way.

This castle was quite unique to me in the fact that it is a ruin that we could just walk about as we pleased. There were a bunch of young boys there running around and up and down. Here is what is left of the castle.

And here we are inside of it. It was a self guided tour with only a few signs on the walls to let you know where you were and a little better of how this part was connected to the rest of the castle that is now gone.

Here is mom going down the steep narrow staircase out of the place.

On our drive we also saw this rather interesting looking structure up on a hill. We investigated further. . .

And found this entrance to in at the bottom of the hill on the other side. I think it is a great looking castle. Mary Queen of Scots was even kept save here for a time along with many other important roles that it played. Mom and I didn't want to pay the price for the chance to walk up the hill while Brian waited in the car with sleeping children so we didn't go in.

Well then it was time to get to the airport for yet another exciting plane ride back to London our journeys now over.

Two days later we put my mom back on an airplane and said goodbye to her. Lizzie kept trying to say goodbye to me and go with Grandma. She gave me the kisses goodbye and wouldn't let me hold her for long. It is cute to see how much Lizzie likes her Grandma.

Three weeks later and I am still trying to get Jamie to sleep through the night again. So I guess that we have yet to fully recover.

I must say though three weeks to get all of this up on the Blog to share with everyone isn't to bad, for me at least. It will be nice to get to write about what we are doing now again so that I won't forget the little fun things in our day to day lives.

I hope that you have all enjoyed hearing of our travels, we sure enjoyed having them. It is getting hard to travel with the two little ones though, so I don't know that we will be doing much more for awhile. Next plane ride might just be to New York with a one way ticket.

Venice, The City of Love!!!!

We woke up on Tuesday and, as we had stayed at a rest stop, we were able to get back on the road quickly to drive down to Venice. We dropped the car off at the airport and took a bus into Venice. This picture is of Jamie chillin' out on the bus.

This again took most of the day and it was very hot and after pulling the luggage to the hotel we just wanted to rest and cool down before doing anything else. We just got some dinner and then went to bed. Our only real day in Venice we walked from our hotel in the north part of the city down to St. Marco Square at the very south of the city. It was way to hot for a walk like that, but I still enjoyed the little alleys and churches. I have been to Venice once before and did a similar walk in reverse. I just loved basically being lost for much of the time and then coming out and seeing a church that was on the map and figure out what direction I needed to be going. This was much the same except we were following spray painted signed to the square. Here are some of the pictures we took on the way across the city.

Here is a great example of how narrow the alleys can be. Brian and I barely fit side by side.

This is one of the smaller canals. Very Venice looking!

Lizzie often times decided that she wanted to walk. I am quite amazed with how much she walked in Venice.

Sometimes she would even try to run a head, it made up for the times when she would decide to stop.

I just had to get one of her walking a lone in a little alley. Really now how cute can she get!!!!

Here favorite thing though was the stairs and the bridges. No matter how tired she was getting she would get excited for the bridge. She does still need a little bit of help with them but it is easier then holding her, and cuter!!!

We finally made it to St. Marco Square, very hot and tired, which is a very beautiful place.

We decided to take a boat back to our hotel and it was to hot to walk back, it was after all about 2pm. I asked the gondola drivers how much a ride would be and they said it would be about 200 euros. We said no thank you and walked away to go to the bus. Two or three drivers came running after us one at a time and we got them down to 80 euros, but still didn't think it was a good idea as all we wanted was a ride home and not the tour they were offering. So we got on the bus which was probably the smarter idea anyway as it was covered. I enjoyed taking pictures of the buildings that we passed as we rode up the grand canal. Here are just a few of my favorites.

Rialto Bridge is the main bridge crossing the Grand Canal with shops on each side of the middle walkway.

I just thought this was a nice looking building, don't know what it is!!

This was the best view picture that I got without a bus stop in the way.

That night my mom stayed with the kids after we got them to bed and let Brian and I walk to city for a while. It was nice to be in this romantic city at night alone with the one that I love. I have love Venice once again from my first visit and have always wanted to take Brian there.

Then next day we headed back to the airport and flew back to London for a day of rest before being off again.

As I finish this part of our many adventures I just want to end with a few thoughts about the trip in general.

The next two picture were a very common sight on this trip, for which we were very grateful. If it wasn't for the car rides these kids would not have gotten many naps.

They are cute when they are asleep.

I also really learned how important it is to have more adults then children. Brian and I would have been exhausted after this crazy journey had it not been for my wonderful mom being there and being able to give us a brake from entertain one kid or the other all of the time. Thank you so much mom for coming with us and dad for letting us borrow her for a while.

Drives through beautiful countryside with a destination are much more enjoyable then just driving to see what is around somewhere trying to figure out what there is to see in the area.

The most surprising thing to me this trip was the food. I had my first good carbonara in Italy. Every time I have been in Italy I have ordered it, because it is my favorite, and have been very disappointed, this time I found a good one and it again gave me faith in Italian restaurants.
That however was not the most surprising thing about the food on this trip, it was that the Italian food was probably my least favorite food, even though it was still good. All of the food that we had at friends house was wonderful. I really enjoyed the Austrian food as well. You don't really hear much about Austrian food but it is really good. I'm happy that Brian learned how to make the Schnitzel so we will be able to have it again, which we already have once since returning home. If you get a chance to try some real Austrian food, don't pass it up.

This trip did go much better then we expected which is a great relief. With all of the driving that we did, it didn't really feel like we drove that much. We did make sure to get out and walk around somewhere everyday which did seem to help. And tried to just go short do able distances each day. So all in all it was a great trip and it doesn't end there.

After a day of rest in London we headed back to the airport early Saturday morning to chatch a plane to . . .

Scottland