Will and Hope

A couple of weeks ago, Will and Hope arrived for their first visit to London! This was also their first time to meet Evie!

Evie was thrilled and immediately started showing off and sharing her stuff (and theirs) with them.

Their first tube ride:

And a visit to Borough Market:

Evie is, it turns out, a fan of stuffed grape leaves and refused to eat anything else for lunch:

Bunny ears: a family favorite. Har har.

It was a cold day, but the sky was clear (which was not the case for most of Will and Hope's visit, unfortunately):

Will's birthday was the day after they arrived, so as part of his birthday extravaganza, we went ice skating at the Tower of London.

We rocked the blue, plastic rental skates.

And posed for the paparazzi:


Jim was obviously the most talented skater of us all:

Hope and I were thoroughly enjoying ourselves, but the men got sore feet and were hungry so we cut our ice-capade short and went out to China Town for dinner and then to Camden, where we all got tattoos of Will's name and birth date. We also made a toast to Kate, who was celebrating her birthday with some football and Thanksgiving leftovers.



Because Will and Hope were in town, we had no excuse for not celebrating Thanksgiving. It's the first time we've been lucky enough to have family around for our American holiday! Despite the extra people to help with Evie, it was still a challenge to keep her out of the kitchen and away from the hot oven. I prepared accordingly:


Jim was ready with the knife:


Jim was the turkey man again this year and was pretty intrigued by the things he pulled out of the turkey's butt (like it's neck).


Evie was keeping everyone happy in the living room..except for maybe Finchley, who she was using as the base for her block towers:



Dinner was an international success, with not only Americans, but also English and Polish people in attendance! And, best of all, Will and Hope did the dishes.


After Thanksgiving, Will and Hope had a day out in the rain on their own and then headed off to Amsterdam, en route to which Hope came down with some flu-like illness. Despite feeling under the weather still when they got back to London, She gamely allowed me to drag them around London some more. Evie was dreaming of Aunt Kate and Uncle Andy:


In Regent's Park, watching the ducks:


And, later, at The Washington, a pub near our house where we met our friends Julie and Simon for dinner:


Not sure what Jim was doing in this picture, but I'm sure it was something very significant.

Will tried black pudding...which is basically gelatinous blood.

I am racing through the rest of the visit because Will and Hope were out on their own a lot and I can hear the sounds of Evie waking up, which means that if I go into too much detail, I will have to continue to not post this blog! Blogging happens during nap time these days, if I'm lucky!

First bus ride:

A stroll in Hyde Park:

Very crowded Portabello Market.

And then the rest of us came down with the flu-like illness, so we didn't really do much more than lie around the house using incredible amounts of kleenex. It was so great to have Will and Hope here, though, and I still am waking up in the morning and expecting them to be in the living room. I feel lucky to have such a great family!