London Philharmonic Fun

Today we went to our first London Philharmonic Orchestra's Funharmonics Family Concert (whew...that's a mouthful). It was wonderful to be able to go hear classical music with Evie in a huge auditorium, which was filled to the brim with children and their families. The environment was great and even the orchestra seemed to be very relaxed and enjoying themselves.


We were on the second row, so we got a very up close look at the strings section. Jim attempted to put Evie on the stage next to some cellos and, of course, she immediately reached out and grabbed one of them and they were politely asked to move by one of the ushers. The cellos were beautiful, though.


The theme was Journeys and the MC, a host of one of the shows on the BBC's toddler channel, told stories of the composers traveling to far away lands and being inspired by music in America and other places. There was also one piece being performed for the first time and a story that some 8 year olds had helped write and illustrate was told over the music.

Pre-show:


Evie was mesmerized by the music and was only squirmy towards the end, but even then she stayed quiet and mostly focused.


Hooray for he orchestra!


Outside the Southbank Centre on a bridge the crosses the Thames:


In order to whet our appetites for the Tex-Mex to come, we decided to get some Mexican food for lunch. Evie charmed the entire staff of the restaurant and even danced with one of the waitresses. It is fun to have such a happy child around all the time! As we made our way home today a random guy stopped us and said, "She's so happy that she makes everyone else happy, too." (and he was a normal non-creepy young guy with his girlfriend). What a nice thing to hear and a nice way to be...we should all try a little harder to be so happy that we make everyone else happy, too!

Wedding Season

Another weekend, another wedding. We took the train to the Cotswolds to celebrate the wedding of our friends Charlie and David.


When we got to the train station in Kemble, we called a cab, but had a while to wait (this wasn't London, after all), so Evie burned some of her never ending energy while running around a pub garden.




It was very rural...almost as rural as Tallulah!


We're not sure if we've ever been to the Cotswolds before on one of our walks, but it was, typically, beautiful English countryside sprinkled with little villages, old pubs, occasional B&Bs and proud, friendly residents. The area that we were in is known for its lakes and water parks. Unfortunately, as usual, we always seem to end up in places that are known for summery things at the wrong times of the year or when a cold front is coming through, but it's nice to know that it is there in case we want to go back sometime.

The wedding was held at a beautiful abbey not far from where we were staying. It occurred to me that if we were going to take Evie to a wedding and stay out late, she definitely needed a nap, so she and I stayed home during the ceremony to catch up on our beauty sleep and Jim went to the wedding with our friends Victoria and Eddie.


En route to the wedding, the bride's antique car broke down, so they had to relocated to another antique car...which also broke down. In desperation, she and her bridesmaids hopped into a taxi...and got pulled over by a cop for speeding. During all of this, the groom was looking more and more nervous, but eventually they did get married.


After the wedding, as promised, the torrential rain began. Just in time for Evie and me to make our way to the reception!


We got there and danced a little to the steel drum band before taking Evie up to the creche and sitting down for dinner:



The reception was in an old rectory that had been turned into a hotel and was very elegant and beautifully decorated. Jim and I sat at a table of the bride's friends from Oxford and enjoyed a delicious dinner and some funny conversations. We've met so many interesting people at weddings over the past few weeks!


After dinner and the toasts, Evie and the other children were invited back down to party on the dance floor. Despite being very tired, Evie found her second wind (via over tiredness) and entertained everyone with her dance moves...and her balloon.

I could hardly keep up with her!


The next morning it was not only rainy, but also cold. Desperate to stretch our legs, we decided to bundle up and take a little walk around one of the hotel lakes.


There were a few birds chirping in the bushes, but even the ducks were hiding out from the unappealing weather. Evie, as usual, was thoroughly enjoying herself, the puddles, her wellies and picking up rocks--her newest obsession.


There was not much to do, under the circumstances, so we did what we do best and went to get something to eat a a local pub. The food was delicious and Evie had her first Sunday roast (the plate in front of me is the CHILD's portion. HUGE! I had vegetarian chili and Jim had a Moroccan lamb dish). She loves beef, peas, potatoes, yorkshire pudding and she does not love cabbage. She also loves Sticky Toffee Pudding and vanilla ice cream...as do the rest of us.

Playing in the beer garden was also fun:


On our last morning, we enjoyed a family breakfast of shreddies before heading to the train station. Our cab driver was late and we only made our train by about 2 minutes, but we managed to get back to London and enjoyed the rest of the bank holiday in the comfort of our flat and grumbling about the horrible weather. It was a nice, relaxing weekend of celebrating happy times, but hopefully spring will really be here soon.

English weddings

Lots of weddings this month. Last weekend we saw our friends Melissa and George get married, but forgot our camera so these not so great iphone pictures will have to suffice.

Here's me in church (which hasn't happened in at least six years), looking very religious with the candles in the background. It was a very beautiful church and Melissa and George looked very beautiful and handsome respectively. There were lots of hats and hymns that had familiar words and unfamiliar tunes.


After the wedding, we were lucky to be able to catch a ride in the chartered coach (which was meant to be for the older people, but since we hung around talking to friends until after most of the other wedding guests had moved on, we were still there when they realized that they had some extra room). The after ceremony drinks were at Leadenhall Market outside of a pub with a Mariachi band playing. Very fun! I wasn't drinking, but I did scarf down a lot of delicious appetizers and got to chat with Melissa, the blushing bride.


Thus end the pictures, but not the party. We headed off to dinner and were seated at the 'random' (Melissa's label) table with Melissa and George, our friend Keren and various other foreigners. We had great conversations and met a lot of really nice people during dinner. And the food was delicious. Especially the pear tart with ice cream. When I was a kid I used to be sad when I got to the end of my dessert, but I hadn't had that feeling any time recently until I got to the end of my pear tart with ice cream. I just didn't want it to end.

Sadly, due to slightly too much wine at dinner on Jim's part and just general tiredness on my part, we headed home just as the music and dancing were getting started. We had a great time at our first English wedding, though and look forward to our second English wedding tomorrow. And this time we will remember to bring our camera.

Babies Babies

We have a new niece and I should have blogged about this last week, but I am just such a slacker. Her name is Cora and she is BEAUTIFUL! We can't wait to meet her in real life, but so far we've seen lots of pictures and we got to marvel over her on Skype. She yawned and slept and squirmed around a little bit and we were smitten. Evie was mildly interested, but she'll be more interested when she meets Cora in real life.

Here is Cora after her first sponge bath. If you could put a picture of Evie having her first sponge bath next to Cora having her first sponge bath, Evie would be the one screaming her head off. Cora, on the other hand, looks like she might even have enjoyed it a little.


Sleeping:


And with her beautiful mama, my sister Kate.


In other news, we also have our own new baby...or one on the way: Evie's little sister or brother, who will be joining us in about six months. Hello baby!

My head has been in an ash cloud

...

Yes, that's my excuse for not blogging for SUCH a long time. But really, although the freakish Icelandic ash cloud has been significantly disrupting many people's lives, I've just been super busy and super tired. I'll try to make up for the lack of blogging with this one, which will give a recap of the past week.

Evie learned about English animals in her Culture Kids class. For some reason the bunny ears that she not so enthusiastically donned looked like something that would be perfect for Mardi Gras. I liked them!


A few days later, Evie and I went with our neighbors Simon and Jack to see some REAL English animals--rare English breeds at a farm outside of London.

A couple of turkeys:


Some friendly chickens:


A toddler game that involved squatting:


Peering at some goats:


Running up and down the ramps through the animal corals was very exciting:


Evie decided to brave sticking her fingers through the mesh, despite the warning sign which read, 'these geese peck.' Fortunately her mother was around to prevent said pecking.


She also insisted on bringing her bag of moldy bread for the ducks, which was a very good idea and much appreciated by the friendly lake ducks and geese!


From the looks of it, these two had a good, tiring time. They both took epic naps which started in their car seats and lasted into the afternoon.


We've been having really nice (sunny, not rainy) weather lately, so my homeys decided to take advantage of it on Saturday and head out for a walk and to the picnic. I also took advantage of their departure to go to the gym and take an extended shower, during which there was not a small person peering at me through the glass shower door or doing something that she was not supposed to be doing while I frantically tried to get the shampoo out of my hair so that I could leap out and intervene. Ahh...it's the little things.


The binky is ever present these days and that is something that we will address when we get back from America...but not before because I need the binky for the plane ride! I keep seeing these kids who are way too old with binkies, though and it makes me determined that Evie will kick her habit sooner rather than later. She still looks cute, despite her oral fixation.


Playing in our garden (in her socks! You can tell that I wasn't around for this! Jim was probably out there in his socks, too. Sigh...).


More potting...but our garden is pretty shabby and unkempt at this point (note the dead plant in the pot that Evie is diligently tending), so I'm sure it wasn't as satisfying as her gardening experience in Italy.


Sunday morning was also nice because Jim let me sleep in...hooray! When I rounded the corner of the living room, I caught Evie's eye and she gave me this big, wonderful, pleased grin. She and Jim were playing in the free and, so far, most successful toy of all: the box.


Another beautiful day so much fun was to be had at the playground. Evie can climb up the stairs onto the top of the slide and then, without any hesitation to make sure that there is someone at the bottom, will catapult down head first. She is very fast so we have to be very fast, too.


Sitting on some steps with the ever present pink ball:


A new way to travel--she LOVES the giant backpack that Jim bought her. Good thing we now have every baby carrier known to man...


We met our friends Jackie and Piotrek and some of their friends (who were very nice!)in Hampstead Heath for a warm picnic. There were lots of lobster red people all over the place, enjoying the sunshine and taking advantage of the fact that it also wasn't cold. We've had a lot of sun lately, but it hasn't exactly been WARM sun. I'm not complaining (too much) though, because sun beats rain and it's so much easier when it's not raining to get through the day with Evie. Anyway, at our picnic, Evie was in her element.


She really thinks willow trees are funny:


The picnickers!


The cutest two headed monster heading home.


And my homegirl, who put my sweaty Cleveland Indians hat on all by herself and proceeded to drag her giant legos around the house. She's funny!


SO, as you can see, life has not been super exciting since we got back from Italy, which is why I haven't been super motivated to blog. But we LIKE it that way. After all the excitement, illnesses, delayed flights and general exhaustion we are happy to just be bored for a while. We DO have some weddings coming up, so that at least Jim and I will get to be glamorous Jim and Claire and can pretend like we actually sometimes groom ourselves and have nice clothes. You may have noticed the absence of pictures of me in this blog. That's because I'm sick of haggard looking pictures of me so until a really good one comes along, I am staying incognito.

Until next time! Which will be soon! I promise! Especially if Kate and Andy send me some pictures of that baby!

Cora

Today our tiny niece Cora Virginia was born! We are so happy for Kate and Andy and will post some pictures as soon as we get some!

Evie and her show

We let Evie watch about 20 minutes of TV a day before she has her milk/books/brush teeth/bed routine and the show she likes to watch--In the Night Garden--usually elicits this type of response.