A visit with Lala and Grandpa--London

How lucky are we that we got to see Lala and Grandpa (or Mom and Dad, depending on who you are) AGAIN this summer? They came to visit for two weeks and we had fun in London and beyond.

Evie got dressed up in her fanciest pink sparkly skirt in honor of Lala and Grandpa and by the end of the day had ditched her shirt completely. This started a several day fight over whether or not it was necessary to wear a shirt (it was).

Fun topless times with Grandpa and Elmo:

After a good night's sleep, we hopped on the tube and headed to the London Zoo. Evie and I got to skip the line with our Zoo membership and waited patiently for Lala and Grandpa to come through. Waiting patiently is not Evie's strong point.

Finally!!

I didn't take very many pictures at the zoo, unfortunately, but I did catch the highlights: the water park and the 'I'm not sure I want to do this' moment with Grandpa and the sheep in the petting zoo. It was a fun day and the first time that Evie really enjoyed and paid attention to the animals at the zoo.
The next morning, after a brief argument over the fact that she couldn't wear her banana smeared and dirty pink sparkly skirt, Evie decided that, in fact, her hot pink tutu was a better option (with a shirt, I insisted) and made us all some tea.

Then, off to the National Gallery and Portrait Gallery we went!

Dancing in the National Portrait Gallery:
Evie and Opie:
Absorbing the culture:

The Blur's first escalator ride out of the stroller:

Taking a break with Grandpa:
Trafalgar Square, where you're not longer supposed to feed the pigeons, but everyone does anyway. You can't quash Mary Poppins!
Our next big adventure was in the Cotswolds, where we went for our friends Victoria and Eddie's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding in a beautiful setting and we were lucky that Mom and Dad came along and took care of Evie for us while we partied the day and night away.

The bride and groom!

The wedding was in a historic hotel called Tortworth Court, which housed a lot of controversy in its time and was completely run down and derelict before someone came along and restored it in the 90's. It was set in the middle of some pretty impressive botanical gardens and also near a prison (we haven't figured that part out yet). It was a great setting for a wedding!
Jim was there, too:
Cool super star dance moves:

Even cooler super star dance moves:

The next morning, after not enough sleep, we embarked on a tour of the grounds with Master Naturalist Mom/Lala. The horrible maps of the grounds caused a few disagreements about which tree was which, but we managed to identify a few.

Evie preferred playing under the trees.

Dad with scenic background:

Back in London, Jim arranged for us to come visit him at work and have a tour of the Olympics site. Our visit also coincided with the '2 years to go!' celebrations.

We got to wear some super stylish apparel during our visit and were able to get an up close look at all of the incredible buildings that are being completed for the 2012 Olympics. We also got to visit Jim's landscape design project and it was really exciting to see what he has been working so hard on all of these years (now that it doesn't look like a big dirt pile).

Next to the aquatics centre:
On the site of Jim's project, across the canal from the stadium.
Official visitors:
Dad looked dapper in his PPE:
In the Olympics version of a limo:
Admiring the stadium. Soon after this, we fixed Mom's cockeyed hat:


We also had a visit to the London Transport Museum. Unfortunately, it was during this trip that we managed to lose spare Dou Dou. But other than that small disaster, we enjoyed looking at the old tubes and buses and learning a little bit about the history of transportation in London. Evie was a little creeped out by the mannequins on the buses and tubes, which was understandable.

Evie and Lala with the fake horses. Evie was much more interested in looking at the miniature versions of everything.
Evie and Grandpa next to an old steam engine. Evie was not a fan:
Taking a break in an antique tube (also the site where Jim spilled champagne and was reprimanded by a museum person at his holiday party last year):
Evie 'No Hands' Bus Driver:
Evie Enthusiastic Taxi Driver:
Next up: Scotland!

Welcome back

Welcome back to our blog, which we have been neglecting for some time now. We've been super busy with family and fun stuff, so have lots of blogging to catch up on.

I want to start this blog with a brief Evie update before I move on to our trip to Scotland and our visit with Mom and Dad.

First, walk down memory lane: here is Evie with her friend Oliver last summer at the Keats' House Teddy Bears; Picnic.

And here she is one year later, sitting quietly for five seconds only during the entire thirty minutes we were there before it got rained out. She did pay enough attention to clap once, too. The rest of the time she ran amuck, took her shoes off, jumped off of the stumps behind the women who were reading the stories and singing the songs, attempted to steal the other children's teddy bears and generally was the kid that makes you thankful for your own, well behaved angel. I could feel the disapproving vibes from the mothers of the angelic children, but I bet that we have more fun than they do!

Other highlights from this week were...

A visit from our Boston friends Steve, Lisa, Jake and Melanie! They have been in Paris and London for a couple of weeks and Evie and I were so happy to see them when they swung by Hampstead. We took a walk in Hampstead Heath and fed some happy ducks. Evie was smitten with the entire family for obvious reasons (they are awesome) and has insisted on wearing a colorful hair band on her wrist since Melanie introduced her to that cool new trend.



We had an artistic morning on a rainy day in London. Here is the artist in her kitchen:


Oops. The supervisor made the mistake of making herself a cup of tea and disaster struck!

Painting on paper on the wall, very proudly.

In her gallery!

And finally, some daily fun places to hang out. In Mom and Dad's bed, where she and Elmo and company pretend to go "night night" first thing in the morning (oh how I wish they were actually all settling down for a nap that early in the day).

The bed is a lot more fun when Dad is around and pillow fights abound!

Under the table is a great place to go for 'private time' after breakfast, but is even more fun when
it's decked out as a fort.

Again, always better when Daddy comes to play in the fort, too! (Mom is too pregnant to play in the fort at the moment):
Stay tuned for Mom and Dad and Scotland!

A much needed country walk

This weekend we took our first country walk since Evie was about 5 months old. She was a great walking companion, but we should have paid attention to the sentence in the book that said "this is a great walk for winter months!" The nettles were out of control, but I seem to be the only one who really suffered their wrath. More on that later.

Train rides, however short, are always exciting. Evie generally spends about 2 seconds looking out of the window (see below) and then the rest of the time alternating between attempting to run the length of the train and attempting to crawl around on the completely filthy floors and under seats. I go into a semi-catatonic state and Jim deals with the situation, usually.

The battle of wills over the wearing of the sunhat is a constant theme in our lives these days. Although she is very, very enthusiastic about sunscreen (because when we put sunscreen on that means we're about to go outside), Evie makes a huge effort to lose her hat during every outing. Here, I attempt to put the hat in a positive light by modeling it. That tactic did not work.
Jim and Evie acted as our guides during our country walk. In addition to learning that we should pay attention to the seasons mentioned in the book, we also probably should have maybe checked when the book was published. In this case, the book was published in 2005...and a lot of the landmarks we were looking for were either not there or had changed considerably. So the trusty guides had their work cut out for them.
We made it safely through the first kissing gate:
Across the first field:
and safely over the first stile:
As a side note, it is not easy to hoist yourself over a stile when you are about 15 pounds heavier than you used to be. Lucky for me, most of the stiles had been replaced by kissing gates, so I only had to haul myself over a few of them.

It was a warm day for England and I'm extra warm all the time, so I attempted to keep cool by adopting a Dukes of Hazard look for pregnant women while we were walking. Here I am baring it all at 22 weeks pregnant (insert wolf whistle)! When Evie turned around and saw me she yelled, "BABY!!!" At least it's clear that I'm pregnant now...even to Evie.

Nothing makes you walk faster than the sizzle of live electricity going through giant pylons above your head. And talking about what would happen to you if one of them were to fall while you were walking underneath it also gets you moving.
There is lots of naturally occurring chalk in the Chilterns, and I decided to demonstrate how well it works on a falling down stile. I can hear my mom's voice saying "fools names and fools faces always appear in public places." Oh well. We brought our piece of chalk home, so Evie can use it to graffiti our back garden.
Just before the next picture was taken, we made a detour on a path through the woods that, in retrospect, we are pretty sure we weren't supposed to take. In the process of walking on said path AND attempting to avoid the masses of nettles that were obscuring most of it, I managed to step off the path and slip down right into a huge patch of them. For the record, this was not a jarring fall, but more like just sat down so there is no need to worry! At this point, I was still in Dukes of Hazard mode AND ended up on my back...a position that I struggle to get out of without rolling over onto my side (not something I wanted to do in a patch of nettles with my shirt pulled up), so, like a turtle stuck on its back, I had to lie in the nettles until Jim and Evie could get back to pull me out. Then I had to endure about ten minutes of painful stinging on my back. Only after the incident did someone mention that the antidote to stinging nettles--Dock Weed?--always grows alongside of the nettles. Next time!!!

Here are Evie and Jim in a field of wheat and poppies after the nettle incident.
It's hard to go on a country walk without walking through at least one herd of animals. This time it was some curious cows. You can tell Evie was really enjoying the smell.
We were very excited to reach a village with some pubs. We were hungry and thirsty and needed to refill our water bottles and, in Evie's case, to stretch her legs.


The first pub was a little seedy, but also had ponies, chickens, ducks and fish! Evie attempted to ditch her hat by throwing it into the water with the ducks and fish, but Jim quickly found a long stick and rescued it. Despite her country experiences, Evie still is an urban girl and was not very interested in having the cute and friendly ponies anywhere near her. She consented to look at them while safely in my arms.
Having concluded that we didn't want to eat lunch at this pub, we headed on to the next one, which was much nicer AND had some steam powered machines stopped in front of it on their way out of town after a steam rally. Very cool! We watched them drive off and they blew their whistles as they left.
Having a drink. Somehow DouDou convinced us to bring him along with us. We almost lost him about six times as well:

Alas, we did not finish the walk, but did make it about 6 or 7 miles before we gave up and got a taxi to the Amersham train station. Everyone was tired, but it was a successful outing and gave us the confidence to start walking again...well, at least for a couple of more months.

By the way, we discovered that the camera battery was dead upon getting onto the train, so all of the pictures in this blog were taken with my iphone. Not so shabby!