A whole lot of family time

Lately we've been really motivating and doing lots of fun things out and about in London.

Everyone likes pizza and sometimes it's more fun to schlepp on the tube in search of a pizzeria type place instead of going to Pizza Express all the time. So that's what we did. And I have to say the pizza wasn't really that outstanding and I much prefer the kind of pizza places we have in America that have stone baked pizzas with all kinds of weird ingredients on top. But it was still fun...and the cheapest pizza we've ever eaten in London:

Much better than the pizza was the yummy gelato that we got in Belsize Park at the new gelato place. Millie was pretty much freaking out over my coconut gelato...which was a little bit of a complicated situation since she was in the sling and was swatting at my face and hands in an effort to get her hands on my ice cream. We shared.

And there was a rainbow. The last time there was such a spectacular rainbow was during the riots...chaos on the ground and beauty in the sky.

A family portrait drawn by Evie ('That's you, Mom. With the curly hair.' )

A long weekend is probably not the best time to go to Kew, but we did it anyway, stopping to fortify ourselves at Starbucks first.

And then stopping to fortify ourselves again with a picnic when we got there (we like to stay well fueled in this family).

Millie always gets the short end of the stick on our outings because she has to stay in the stroller (and wear her hated hat), but she'll be walking soon and then she'll have her fun, too:

Big tree:

And you can walk among the treetops at Kew now, which I was all gung ho to do. Jim stayed down below with Millie and Evie and I headed up to the top. It was all fun and games until the structure started swaying...but we made it all the way around and down again. There were definitely a few weak kneed moments, though. Walking a hundred feet up in the air with only some mesh between you and the air is a little unnerving.

Waving to Jim and Millie:
Fearless Evie runs out ahead:

You can't really tell, but this is a view down from the top of a tree.

And a video of us up there (featuring my feet and Evie in full princess dress):


Back down on the ground, Millie wondered why we parked her in front of those menacing looking geese.

Her moved improved considerably when we went to the kid's area and she could free range a little bit.

Butterfly face. By the end of the day it had rubbed off and Evie looked like she had a terrible sunburn and pink eye:

And after standing there for 10 minutes, I finally kicked two tweens off the swing so that the girls could swing together. Sigh, I am a playground veteran now. At first Millie looked very nervous, but she got over that:

It was an action packed and exhausting bank holiday weekend, but fun!