London Part 4: The Wedding!

Okay, I have had the wedding pictures uploaded to this post for two days now but I have been fighting the videos. I couldn't even get one to upload after I let it process all day! Anyways, I had hundreds of photos to go through so it took awhile to condense them down and yes this is a small portion of them. BTW we lost the other camera that we had with us so mine was the only one we had at the wedding, that's why there were so many. I should also mention that I did not know at the time (I found out after we got home) that my camera will pick and choose which photos it will save when the battery is dying. I got home and realized I had more good pics that I couldn't find (ie one of me in front of tower bridge and tons of the black swans) frustrating.

Okay here are the wedding pics finally!

Tuesday Dec. 21st we got up and headed down to Plymouth for the wedding. Me and Mar had been up past three waiting for everyone to get back and then talking a bit, needless to say none of us had more than four hours of sleep that day. George and Harriet got married at Boringdon Hall. It was such a cute old castle, I loved it.

The boys in their tuxes, James is always making faces!

Waiting for the ceremony to begin.

Here comes the bride (her brother Sam walked her down the aisle). Harriet looked gorgeous! Her dress was so pretty!

George looks so happy

The newly married couple

Marianne cried the WHOLE time and had the rest of us crying too!

Harriet and her siblings (Becky, Bethen, and Sam)

Harriet's cute shoes!

Look closely you can see all the snow that caused the big mess...oh and grass!
Really James?

The luncheon

My luncheon menu was this:

Starter: Home smoked chicken breast resting on dressed leaves and asparagus spears, with a honey and mustard dressing
Main: Roast supreme of chicken coated with thyme and citrus juice, served with bacon roll, bread sauce and roast gravy
Dessert: Traditional profiteroles filled with Chantilly cream and coated in a warm dark chocolate sauce
Yep, my dinner was as good as it sounded!

Mar at the table with all the guys- she was pretty happy!

cutting the cake

fireworks on the cake...awesome! (I couldn't get my video to load, bummer)

lighting chinese lanterns, you make a wish and send them into the sky. This was awesome even though it was so cold.

Video of the lanterns, I hope it works.

Due to the weather there were people that couldn't make it, everything was smaller and more intimate than I expected. It was a very nice elegant wedding. The English have some different traditions than we do. They had these crackers that you pull and get prizes (pic in the next post), they also put on the paper crowns, the lighting of the lanterns, and the fireworks on the cake. It was so neat to see all the things they do and it was so much fun!

Congratulations you guys! It was an awesome wedding! We are so happy for you guys!

I will post more Boringdon Hall pics in the next post, probably two more posts left (I really have a ton of pictures).

Nicholas' Baby Blessing Weekend

This past weekend we headed to Utah for Nicholas' blessing. We took off Friday after Ash was out of school and made the long drive it took us 6 hours to get down there, but we did make a ton of stops including the grocery store. We were finally able to give Devin and Julie the pile of presents I had for them, including this one. We made this for their Christmas gift this year. This was taken before Kami demolished the bow and ribbon in the car (sorry guys).

We spent Friday night playing games with Gene and Taylor, and playing with their new phones. Gene has the droid, I am so jealous.
Saturday we got up and headed to Cedar Hills to see this new nephew I haven't met yet. He is so cute and has TONS of hair! He also looks like he is three or four months old! He was a tank compared to Chelsea. No wonder I have never felt like I had a real newborn, he wasn't much bigger than Ash.

Ky holding a boy- he looks so happy! Sorry honey we only produce girls :) !

Mahon is always playing with the kiddos.

Just like her daddy!

Ash trying on Cindy's vest. Kami freaked out and hated it!

After hanging out for a bit and eating lunch some of us headed to Cabelas. Devin and Julie have the privileged of living super close. I only go for the fish and animals! Ash was nose to nose with this fish.

Chelsea didn't quite know what to think.

Ky found this AWESOME chair!

After Cabelas we all headed out for some yummy pizza. There were so many of us that it took forever to get our food and the girls were starving by the time it arrived- Kami was fine since she ate like four helpings off the salad bar! We spent the rest of the evening hanging out with Gene, Taylor, and Sydney. Then Sunday morning we headed off to the blessing. The blessing was very nice and the girls were pretty good during church. We did take off after sacrament since the girls had school the next day and still needed baths. This time we made it in like five and a half hours minus the stop to pick up the dog. We got home about 8:30. We had a good trip, but we hope next time we can see more of everyone. Kami loves to play with Anna.

London Part 3

Alright so I am finally getting around to posting more about London.

The next three days that we were there were crazy. Saturday morning we woke up to snow, not uncommon here but very uncommon there. We packed up and headed off to the airport to pick up George. George had to finish finals before he could fly over. What can I say- we sat in that packed airport for over four hours before we finally found out that his plane was diverted to Paris. His was the next plane to land btw. So we left and headed down to Exeter, hoping that George would be able to fly in the next day. The roads were bad, not bad for here, and this was our first experience on England roadways...SCARY!!! Their roads are just wide enough for a car and sometimes not even that. We were in a small mini-van but it was one of the larger cars over there. There is no shoulder to the road, there are hedges or brick walls. One of the shockers was when we discovered that sometimes a two lane road will merge to one lane and both directions of traffic have to share the one lane! There are lots of round-a-bouts and thank goodness for that GPS, but I do still hear that women in my sleep! We spent that first night in Exeter and then in the morning headed to Dawlish (Harriet's house). I will say that one of the things I was really looking forward to was the beautiful green country side...nope it was white just like home. I should also mention that the country pretty much shuts down with a few inches of snow. The main highways were packed with abandoned cars and they were telling people to stay off the roads. The trains ended up icing up and not running, what a mess! Anyway, so we made it to Harriet's and eventually talked to George. Poor George he was stuck in Paris where he couldn't speak the language and couldn't see the Eiffel tower due to the weather. We learned that the planes weren't leaving that day either (Sunday) maybe the next day, and that the earliest we could get him a Euro train ticket was for Tuesday morning the day of the wedding. I did find him an alternate route of taking a train across France to the port of Calais and then ferry across to Dover, but since he didn't speak the language and we didn't want him getting lost in France this was plan B. The plan was to see if he could fly out Monday morning and if not then try to ferry, what a nightmare! After talking to George and getting to know Karen (Harriet's mom) we headed to our next place to unpack, the Cubby Hole. We stayed in the cutest little flat a block from the ocean in Tiegnmouth. Here are the pics from our place.

Views from the windows, the ocean is right around the corner

Our van and more of the town

Oceanside

After checking in we did hit the beach and looked around for a bit before we headed back to Karen's to have dinner with her and Harriet. I should mention that the place we stayed at was awesome! It was so cute and English just like we all wanted. The place had three floors with all the bedrooms and baths on the top floor and we enjoyed our view. I really loved it here is the link for pics of the place. Anyways, we had a wonderful dinner with Harriet and her mom (I really love the accents over there). Her mom was very nice, but everyone was super worried about George. This was also the night I was finally able to Skype with Ky and the girls, up until then we were just emailing thanks Harriet! Funny that I was worried about not making it home for Christmas and it never occurred to me that the groom might not make the wedding!

Our pictures from the beach

Still so cold!

Mar getting seashells
The pier, too bad it was closed.

These next ones are from Monday. Me and Mar went back to the beach and found lots of seashells (and shopped) while everyone else drove to Dover to pick up George. Yep no planes flying out that day either. Luckily he hooked up with a travel agent and his family and they were all able to travel together across France.
The weather was so crappy!

The starfish necklace I brought home. The gal that owned the Cubby Hole where we were staying also had this cute shop right below and we found some awesome stuff in there!

We were also able to walk the area and hit most of the shops there. We even found a bookstore where I got all of Ash's fairy books and Peppa pig books for Kami. There were so many neat souvenirs, lots of stuff done in seashells. We had a fun day, but James said they were miserable. They drove through a horrible blizzard and it took two hours longer to pick up George than they thought. We were expecting them back about 11 and they didn't walk in until almost three in the morning! But George made it to the wedding with 10 hours to spare!
FYI the wedding post is next Missy!