Wednesday, December 29, 2010

London Part 1

After looking at all my pictures I am realizing that this will probably be like 5 posts or so. Here is part 1. We started off by getting up early and heading to the airport after a night in SLC at a local hotel. I couldn't believe that we didn't have to wait in hardly any lines, I definitely wasn't expecting that. This is the first plane we flew in to Chicago, it was very small.
I will admit that after a few minutes in this plane I was quite worried about the 8 hour flight to come. The take off and landing were not so smooth and we hit quite a bit of turbulence. Thankfully, our next flight went smoother.
Waiting for our flight, James is always making faces!
This was our 777 and it was huge! I was pretty impressed BA is a nice way to fly. We all had our own TV's and reclining seats with foot rests, this flight was nice. Oh and the food was good too. I watched Salt, it was also good.
After traveling for over 12 hours we finally landed in London. The wait through border crossing and customs wasn't bad at all, it was 6:30 in the morning over there and their slow time. We collected all our crap and headed off on the train (the piccadilly line) to our hotel.
The travel to the hotel was kind of a mess. We found out very quickly that it was incredibly COLD and it was raining to boot. But after we got settled in, fed, and showered we were ready for some sight seeing.
We stopped off at Parliament square first. This was my view from the covered area I was in.
Look up!
We walked around and took tons of pictures of Big Ben and the houses of Parliament.
Statue of Winston Churchill
Then we went to Westminster Abbey
There was so much detail, it was beautiful.
View from over the River Thames
The London Eye, we would have liked to have road it but it was cloudy and cold.
Then we went to Nelson's column
I love this picture of Mar, I think it was my favorite one I took the whole trip.
These were taken in front of the national Gallery. I love this ship in a bottle.
We then went into the National Gallery, where you are not allowed to take pics, oops. I just got one though, but we saw some awesome paintings. We didn't stay too long in here because we were half frozen, starving, and dead tired. So we headed back to our hotel for some R&R. The hotel we were staying in was this cute B&B and the lady was so nice. The funniest thing happened to me this first night. We went to bed at about 6:00 pm and when I woke up I looked at my watch it said 3:00 (home time). Well instead of adding 7 hours I subtracted 7 hours, I thought it was 8:00 in the morning. I should also mention that I heard voices in the hall and thought everyone was getting up and ready for the day. I proceeded to get up and shower repack my suit case, basically I was getting ready for the next day and I felt rested. When what I thought was 9:15 rolled around and it wasn't getting lighter plus no one had come to check if we were up I finally realized what I had done. After accidentally waking up Mar we ended up staying up until like 2:00 in the morning. Then we slept in the next day... oops! That was our first day in London and it was a big one. I will try and get day 2 posted in the next couple of days.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Christmas

Christmas this year was very different for us. Since I was in England for the 10 days preceding Christmas we didn't get to do our traditional stuff as a family, I missed out on the carols, hot cocoa, the traditional Christmas movies, and looking at lights. We never did manage to get our nativity put up. Needless to say, it didn't really feel like Christmas to me and still doesn't even now. I think that the ultimate gift this year was the fact that I did make it home for Christmas, I walked in about 3:30 am, but I was here. Here are some of the highlights.
Christmas eve pj's
Peppa pig for Kami from the UK, Kami loves Peppa pig
Kaite's snow globe from London
Ash's fairy books from London, these are the newest released ones that probably won't be available here until the end of next year.
Blankets from Grandma B
My vase that I LOVE
Kami's big gift this year was a scooter. Santa brought her the pads and all morning she kept asking to open one certain present when I asked her why she said "that's my new scooter" she said that is why Santa brought her pads. I still can't figure out how she new it was a scooter!
The girls got furniture for their new dollhouse
This is actually my old dollhouse that we fixed up and the girls are going to help us redecorate it, they love it.
Kami was wiped out by the end of the night
Kami on her scooter

We did have a good Christmas and I wasn't as tired as I thought I would be. I had been up 31 hours by the time I went to bed Christmas eve, crazy! Anyway, the girls were so happy that "Santa" brought me home to them. My mom came up and stayed the night with us and the girls loved having her here for presents. Merry Christmas everyone!
Christmas dresses, they wore them this past Sunday since I wasn't here the previous one.
I will post about London later. I have a TON of pictures to go through so it will take a few posts to get everything in.