September events

Jim and I went to the London Proms for the first time ever courtesy of our friend Claire, who gave us tickets. We decided to walk through Green Park and other neighborhoods to get there, which was really nice. Autumn has arrived, but we still are having pretty warm weather and got to enjoy beautiful London.

The Proms take place at the Royal Albert Hall. We had been there before to see Erasure, but never for classical music.



The view from our seats. It was an opera and since Jim and I have no operatic experience we didn't know that we needed to buy some books which told us what they were singing. So, don't ask me what the opera was about, but there was a lot of angst and anguish and spit flying everywhere. At one point one of the main guys was up to no good with spells and a smoking cauldron and a scary voiced, goblin-type man in the background. It was all very dramatic!

After opera, it was necessary to blow off a little steam:

The next day was the Gayton Road Festival, which takes place on a street in Hampstead. The residents provide music and rides and if we had gotten there earlier, Evie would have had her pick of second hand dress up clothes. Despite missing out on that, she had a great time riding on a train (she picked that over a pink car!) but was not a fan of loud jazz music. Note: Jim and Millie were home taking a nap when these pictures were taken. They joined us later, but I forgot to take pictures.

Little Miss Millie is on the verge of taking her first steps. She has come a long way since this picture was taken. Now she can get up on her own and looks like she's going to make a move at any moment. She likes to walk around the house holding on to one of our hands and is very proud of herself.

We also took the girls to play in Regent's Park, where they were the cutest kids in the sand pit:

And Evie was able to fly around on her scooter, sans hills. Even though she looks like she might be about to have a spectacular crash in the video, she did not.

Millie enjoyed a few moments of life without her diaper on--a rare treat in a land as chilly as England (and a great picture of her standing on her own)!

Jim is always his happiest when he's hanging out with his little girls. And so are they!


Evie has also started ballet (highly anticipated) and, although she has some trouble staying focused when other ballerinas decide to misbehave, she really loves it.

Millie loves it, too!

Jim and I also--FINALLY--went on the London Eye with a group of ex-pats. As part of our London Eye visit, we got wine and appetizers and got to go around twice, which I thought might be a little excessive, but turned out to be a lot of fun. We were kind of busy talking to everyone so didn't really take in the view like we should have, but Jim was able to find the Olympic Park (he can find the Olympic Park from any height in London) and I got to pose with a rainbow.

And I forced Jim to let me take a picture of him, too. He was clearly very excited about it (that's Jim's official fake smile. In the picture with Evie above, you can observe his real and genuine smile).

Another real and genuine smile with Millie on a swing in Golders Hill Park (we are lucky to have about six parks within our reach)!
And if you want to see true joy, give Evie an ice cream cone. I think ice cream is her favorite food in the world, followed closely by cake and sausages.
It's been a fun month and tomorrow we're going to the circus, where Evie will ask, upon seeing the ponies (who have been hanging out in Hampstead Heath between shows), "Where's he's mommy?" She thinks the horses are the ponies' mommies and won't accept anything else.

Jim's birthday weekend extravaganza

(Or: Jim and Claire ditch the kids and sleep in for a couple of days).

Yes, it's true. After all that family togetherness, we felt we deserved a couple of days in the country sans kids. So we left them with a responsible party and headed to the Cotswolds for two days of country walking and overeating and sleeping until 8:30!!!!!

Alas, our socks were not super cool:
But these two chickens were too busy chasing each other to notice.

We walked the Eckington Circular along the River (umm...I forgot the name of the river, but will try to remember to figure out which river it was and update this blog).

People are very generous in the country. We took a few wormy apples along with us for sustenance:
Birthday weekend Jim:
And standing on a questionably stable dock? Fishing platform? We don't know, but there were a lot of them:

An old bridge:

After our walk, Jim and I went back to our room to put on more deodorant and then headed to a nearby market town, Leyton. It was full of cute shops and bookstores, some of which were grossly overpriced. I mean, I would love Danish cutting boards with beautiful pictures of fish, meat, vegetables and poultry on them, but not at £40 a pop!

Jim under an old building:
And in an old market with some funny old signs:

I looked very classy and demure in my shorts and birkinstocks, amongst all of the history (you can take the girl out of America, but you can't take the American out of the girl):

We put together a model of the old school house in the old, historic market town.
Actually, Jim basically told me where to put the pieces and I only posed for this picture. I am not good at math or puzzles (and this counted as a puzzle), so hopefully our girls will get some of those smarts from their dad! I'm pretty sure they are both already better at puzzles than I am.

After resisting some delicious looking cakes and sharing a pot of tea, we decided it was time for our second walk of the day: The Malvern Hills. They were spectacular. To get up to the top, involved a lot of steps. Here is Jim about to ascend:
And me, half way up:
More stairs:
Jim has a rest in a valley within the hills:
King of the Mountain on his 36th birthday weekend!
And a picture that we took of ourselves at the top. We miss taking walks like this on a regular basis so much. In fact, this is the first real country walking we've done since the girls were born.
After we got to the top, I decided it would be nice to walk down the hill and to the reservoir below, which I stupidly thought we would be able to walk around (it was surrounded by fortress style fencing, which we eventually had to make our way around).

Jim looked very short and wide from above (note: he is neither):
Through the woods.
After we finally got through the woods, we had to straggle up a side road and through another wooded area where there were either a billion bees buzzing in the trees or a billion flies buzzing in the trees. It was a little unnerving, but very beautiful.

Back at the B&B we managed to shower and drag ourselves to a dinner that we were really too tired to enjoy fully. It was nice to be worn out from so much countryside, though!

The next day, we had the option of taking a bread baking course (our B&B was also a cooking school), but we decided that we needed to get back and be parents again. On our way home, we stopped at the Moreton in Marsh Show, which was a big agriculture and horse show in Moreton in Marsh (hence the name). We wandered into an arts and crafts tent, where we saw these women making yarn and tatting lace.

The next tent we went into was full of about 600 chickens, stacked in rows from floor to ceiling. This picture only shows part of one row:

And there were some seriously weird looking chickens in there, too! Jim posed with his personal favorite.
This chicken looked like a muppet:
This one had a bouffant:
And this one was a silky chicken:

And you can't go to an English festival without the obligatory Morris Dancers. These were, hands down, the most friendly and enthusiastic Morris Dancers we have met in all of our time in England. I think it was because they were rural Morris dancers. Jim and I have decided that, were we English, we could definitely be Morris Dancers. In fact, their style dancing is the kind that brings me great joy. It involves lots of skipping and jumping and swinging your partner round and round. But I'm pretty sure that being American automatically excludes you from Morris Dancing.

Despite spending the first 17 years of my life on a farm, I know nothing about farming or farm animals. Even though we weren't able to pick the winning bull, we enjoyed watching them getting their hair done for the big show!

Back at home, it was time to celebrate Jim some more! Evie and Millie were ready and waiting with a delicious birthday cake. Evie has been practicing singing happy birthday since her birthday in January and Jim's birthday was a highly anticipated event!


Happy Birthday, Jim!