UK Trip Highlights Part One

Highlights of Our First Day Touring London
--Pret A Manger--this amazing sandwich shop in London that uses all natural ingredients and donates their daily leftovers to local charities. I got a lemon chicken sandwich and it was amazing!
--Hearing a little kid yell at us for saying the word "kiss." As we were walking away, he started calling for his mom, presumably to get her to lecture us.
--Watching two geese attack each other in St. James Park.
--Cuddling with Brody on the tube.

I knew if I waited to post on our trip until we got back, I'd be overwhelmed and not get around to writing anything! So I'm hoping to jot some short posts as we go along, and then a slew of pictures when we get back!

We were very thankful Mom didn't know about the first adventure of our trip: almost missing our flight out of DC. We encountered the craziest day of traffic ever, and so what should have taken 4 and a half hours, tops, ended up taking over 6 and a half hours. So we got to the airport less than an hour before our international flight--we (and our bag!) made it on, but we got a dirty look.

Once we got in Saturday morning, we hopped on the tube to the town of our friends Brad and Sarah Belschner and discovered that our international phone coverage wasn't working as planned, so we bumbled our way to their house. They weren't home, but as we were sitting on their front step wondering how we would ever find them, they drove up!

We spent our afternoon in the town of St. Albans, touring the gorgeous cathedral and windowshopping among the cute shops. We hit a fantastic pub for dinner (The Snug or something like that) during "Happiness Hour" and got two cocktails for the price of one (I got Mai Tais).

Today we went to the Belschners church and had a great fellowship lunch afterwards. Then Brad and Sarah, along with Maria and Alex, two of their friends from church, rode the tube downtown! We headed to the British museum and then Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square (my favorite!), St. James Park, and Big Ben and the Parliament Building. Tomorrow's our long day, and we're hitting Covent Garden for some shopping! Can't wait!

Life Lately

So as you all know, indecisiveness runs in my family. Mom claims to be the queen and says Julie and I are the princesses. The only sense I think that's true is that princesses are queen's daughters, cause I can't believe Mom could possibly be more indecisive than me. All that to say, I keep switching back and forth from wordpress to blogspot, and I think (for now) I'm going to be sticking with blogspot because it seems to be a LOT easier to use.

The big news here at the beach this winter is of course--the snow! Ellis loves any snow he can get, but I'm not a fan of snow here in VA Beach. Because here it doesn't just mean pretty snow, or sledding or snowmen--it means that the world shuts down. No running to Target to grab thank-you notes or mailing a package at the post office. However, the one really nice thing is that people actually drive carefully for once! :)

We did have a really awesome time being "snowed in" in Lynchburg the very last weekend of January! Ellis was competing in the National Government Contracts Negotiations Competition at Liberty, and I came along with the team to hang out with my friend Tamara from college, and her husband and baby! Riley, Tam, Ellis, and I had an awesome time catching up and eating a ton of wintry food and drinking amazing hot chocolate! They live next door to some other friends of ours from NSA, the Heids, so we got to have a mini little college reunion!

The snow in Lynchburg!!


Riley with William (Nick and Jer's baby) and Asher (his and Tam's baby)

Us with Riley and Tam! yay!