I miss my brother.

Dear Wade, 

It was a very cold day today. In fact, the kids in Blackfoot didn't even have school because of the cold. And even here, my kids didn't have to go out to recess. I keep thinking of last year on this day…

The sun was shining, the leaves were changing, but not gone, and the day was absolutely beautiful, especially for the middle of November. I wore a short sleeve blue maternity shirt – the same color blue as your Chevy Cavalier that you loved.

Two of my kids curled up under the pews in the chapel during your funeral and slept almost the entire time. I looked at them and part of me wanted to do the same, so I didn't have to face this reality.

I wonder if you got to be there for part of it? We told a lot of nice things about you. It felt good to remember all the good in your life, and feel so much love for you. So many of your friends came -- some I knew, others I didn't know, but they were people I respected because they knew and loved you too.

It was such an beautiful, hard day. That whole time was.… Something I've never had to go through before. And every day since then has been hard in some way. Hard just to miss you and feel that emptiness of not having you here.

I think of you every. Single. Day. In fact, here I am sick in bed today, gargling Listerine for my sore throat. Every time I grab that blue bottle, I smile and think of you. You could have done infomercials for Listerine, remember? :-) 

And this morning, I asked Natalie what she remembers about you. She told me she remembers the things I made her memorize … Playing your iPad, and getting birthday presents from you for her third birthday. 

I need to go to bed now, Wade. But I somehow felt that if I could write you tonight, I would miss you little bit less.I would love to pick up the phone and hear your voice. A Wade chat has been long overdue! Maybe a nice dream tonight will work too. :-)

I love you, I miss you. Good night.

Saturday and Sunday: Covent Garden, Friends, and Church

So, Friday night we stayed in a nice hotel in St. Albans, near our friends, after our nice Halloween adventure. We woke up, packed up, and had a very lovely full English breakfast buffet in our hotel restaurant. No pictures, but believe me when I tell you those baked beans on toast were delicious! And, my kids were not huge fans of the fried mushrooms or grilled tomatoes, but Brian and I enjoyed them.

Then we set off to explore some of our old haunts, near Golders Green, where we used to live. We drove by our old flat, but didn't try to go in or anything. Here it is…

Good memories in that flat. Spencer was born while we lived there, and the back garden was so lovely and homey for us.

From there, we went into the village and visited our favorite neighborhood park, Golder's Hill Park. The kids really enjoyed themselves for an hour or so, and we got some cute pictures of them…

They even have a small zoo in the park, and the kids were very impressed with some of the animals. Here is Spencer with the ring tailed lemurs...

The sandbox could have kept them busy for another few hours. I was cringing, because I had just given them all baths at our hotel that morning. :-)

Natalie requested this picture specifically, because she saw other children really enjoying this telescope...

scenic view of the park…

We had to drag the kids away, so that we could show them Covent Garden for a few minutes that afternoon. They were very glad we did, once they saw how fun Covent Garden is. They especially loved the live statues…

Not sure if you can tell, but this soldier dude was standing in mid air. Pretty cool! Samantha gave him money, so he gave her a high-five! :-)

The magician was a hit with all three of our big kids! He was funny, and had some pretty good tricks. The best trick was inviting all the children to sit right in front, so the parents couldn't leave! Ha!

I tried to get some good pictures of my kids faces, because they were so excited to watch him perform.…

After the magician show was done, we wandered around Covent Garden's for a few more minutes, then headed over to the British museum because it was nearby.

Some were more excited to be there than others. Here is Spencer pouting on the floor...

Here is a cool shot of the ceiling. It really is such an impressive place! And it is free!! That meant we could run in, take our own 15 minute tour, and check it off our list. :-)

Can you believe they have ancient Egyptian sarcophaguses sitting right out in the open where you can touch them?!  Crazy and cool!

We also took a peek at the Algean Marbles. I told Brian our kids would just think they were a bunch of naked statues. But he thought someday in the future they might think it is cool that they had seen them, all the way from ancient Greece!

So, I dutifully took pictures of the kids standing next to the naked statues…

On our way out, we stopped by the Easter Island statue guy. Apparently he is pretty famous, according to Brian. He looks like a figure from Night at The Museum to me, no? So I guess he really is famous! :-)

I snapped this quick picture (below) of one of the squares we walked through on our way to the Tube. One of my favorite things about London are all the little parks or squares everywhere. They just make the city so green and bright and cheery.

On Saturday evening, we got together with our dear friend Ruth and her grandson. We had great plans of going to eat at our favorite Italian restaurant near our old flat.  Sadly, the place was all booked up and we couldn't get in, so we had to go somewhere else. But we enjoyed a fun visit and saw them at church the next day as well. I made Ruth take a selfie picture with me, which she did not enjoy but I think she looks cute…

It was really nice being back at our old London North Ward. We didn't know many people there, but it was a nice familiar feeling anyway. Ruth and our friends the Leavitts put together a light luncheon afterward for us and people we knew. It was fun to catch up and the food was lovely. Here is one more picture of Ruth and me in front of the church. I sure do love her! We have stayed friends by talking on the phone every week or so since we moved away six years ago.

Saturday and Sunday night we stayed at the Leavitt's house. They are also some of our good friends, and we really enjoyed catching up with them. Brian stayed up talking to Vance about American politics until waaaay late both nights we were there! :-) I didn't get any pictures of them. But I did go around taking pictures of their amazing kitchen. One day when we build our dream home, I want a kitchen just like Marquitta's. :)

Anyway, we had a very nice weekend and really enjoyed catching up with old friends. Monday morning we took off for our adventure "on the Continent." Stay tuned for Paris, coming up next!

Tuesday and Wednesday: Stonehenge and Stroud

Hello, Stonehenge! 

My kids were adamant that we must stop at Stonehenge, and so we did. We checked out of our place Tuesday morning and headed out to see famous Stonehenge and Bath.

It took FOR-EV-ER to get there! It's supposed to just be a 2 1/2 hr drive, but there was a semi truck that had overturned on the motorway, and we were parked for hours, then detoured. Blah. Our kids thought they might die of starvation in our car! 

We finally made it, hours behind schedule. It was the same as it's ever been, surprise.:) Only, they've changed the road around since our last visit. So, now you can't just drive right up to it. Instead they are "preserving" it, and they make you park a mile away at a tourist center and ride their little bus over the hill to walk around it. (Can we say revenue racket??)

Anyway, our kids enjoyed it, and at least we weren't in the car for awhile.

But then, it was nearly dark and traffic stayed bad, and we didn't have time to go to Bath, sadly. Instead we traveled on to our flat in a little town called Stroud.

Our place was lovely--a two bedroom flat with nice light and really comfy beds. Here are the kids trying to teach Camille to crawl on the stairs. She didn't catch on, but they all looked cute!

Here they are, settling in on the hide-a-bed couch to watch part of The Bee Movie before bed.

Here's the cute room where Brian and I got to stay... In an American king bed, hooray! (Most of our beda have been doubles.)

Our view out the bedroom window in the morning...

The front of our flat... So cute and English.

We set off for Wales that next morning, and stopped at Gadfield Elm, which is the first LDS chapel the church ever owned. 

Our kids liked learning a bit about its history, and the service missionary who showed us around was very informative and kind.

He even took a family picture for us--one of the only ones from our trip so far, just because it's too much trouble to get everyone all rounded up and smiling while a stranger has to wait.;)

The missionary recommended a small village nearby for lunch, so we drove over to Ledbury. It was a nice scenic drive with a misty rain falling... Felt so very English...

We even happened into a private castle and stopped for a quick picture...

Ledbury truly was delightful. A perfect little English village...

We happened up this cobbled street...

And happened upon this gorgeous old church...

The missionary from Gadfield Elm told us Brigham Young actually went to Ledbury as a missionary, and visited this church...

We had our lunch in a tiny tea room called Mrs. Muffins. It was perfect. The kids shared a milk shake with Brian at the end, and I'm still dreaming of my sweet potato soup with red pepper and coconut milk.mmmmm...

And then.... We drove the rest of the day. It took forever to get to Wales to visit our friends, Rob and Jenny. I took this picture of our three back-seat sleepers...

Worn out!! It was a long day, but memorable for what we did along the way.

Thursday - Friday: Wales and Halloween

Our great rush on Wednesday night was to get to North Wales to see our good friends, Jenny and Rob Richardson. We made it, by about 8 pm and had a delicious cheesy bacon pasta bake with them. Here's Brian and Camille on their couch the next morning... 

They live on the island of Anglesey, in the village of Llanfairpwllgwn. Yep, it's a Welch name. In fact, it's the second longest name of any place in the world. Llanfairpwllgwn is just an abbreviation. We managed to  catch the full name on the sign of the car dealership below...

Heheh. Both Rob and Jenny can say the full name. They learned it from a song.:)

That first night, Jenny and Rob and I stayed up talking and catching up until very late, which I loved. (Brian was thinking of joining us, but accidentally fell asleep.:)

The next day, Rob went off to work, and Jenny opted to stay home with kids who weren't feeling well. So we went out to tour the island on our own for the afternoon. 

First, we drove down by the strait that makes Anglesey an island. It's small, like a river. Then, we went to Beaumaris Castle. It has a little kids playground out in front of its moat, which we took advantage of, for sure...

And here are the troops, ready to storm the castle...

While Brian took them around exploring the various tunnels and passageways, I stayed in the courtyard with this cutie...

She was in such good spirits, I took advantage of the time to do a little photo shoot with her...

The "baby in the castle ruins" didn't turn out quite like I was hoping. She kept moving, trying to crawl out of the edge of the hole, not too good...

Finally I joined the gang on the ramparts, which Camille loved...

A dark shot of our little explorers...

And a final pic of the outer wall and moat...

After the castle, we decided to head to the very tip of the island, to a town called Holyhead. It turns out that Holyhead is also a little island, right at the tip of Anglesey, which is an island right at the tip of Wales. Cool, huh?

So, near Holyhead, we visited a place called South Stack. It was cold and windy, and very fascinating. There's a very cool lighthouse down some steep  cliffs, on its own little island with a bridge out to it...

It's closed for the season, but we hiked down to it partway anyway. Here are Camille and I, braving the wind. She had her wind cover on the stroller, and believe me, it was doing the job!!

It was rough going with the stroller, so I went back to the car with the baby. But the others trudged on...

Yep, the gate was closed and locked, just like the visitor's center guy said it would be...

It was a nice way to end the day.

Back at Rob and Jenny's, we had dinner, put kids to bed, and talked for awhile again, though not quite so late this time. 

I made a new friend while we were their--- 18month-old Toby. He followed me around a lot and brought me his favorite toys.

Here he is, playing in the back garden,. Little doll boy...

And, the rest of the mischief makers, taking turns in the hammock...

Here's my sweet Jenny, just before we left. 

And her is her lovely home, isn't it so very English?! Or rather, Welch?!:)

The back garden...

Complete with garden gnomes...

We spent most of that day driving back toward London, and met up with our friends, Joyce and Charles, that night, to do Halloween with their family. Camille was thrilled, can't you tell?:) 

Actually, we arrived just as they were ready to go trick or treating, so we quickly raided their dress up box, got on some short-order costumes, and off we went. I didn't even take pictures of the costumes. But Samantha was a fancy lady in a frilly dress. Natalie was a cute little witch, and poor Spencer was a Viking... with only a Viking hat for a costume. I should have planned better, but I really didn't want to haul Halloween costumes all around Europe on our trip. So I figured we'd just borrow from our friends. But Spencer was the only boy, and the boy costumes in their all-girl dress-up box were slim pickings. But that certainly didn't stop him from getting his share of the candy...

Samantha did "trades" with the other girls until she had 88 pieces of candy, she told me...

So, I took just a few pics, then told Samantha to take the camera for a bit. Here she is with the other Samantha. They seemed to be fast friends...
And she took this one of Natalie, the only  one we got, I guess.

And a last one of Spencer, enjoying some apple cider...

Happy Halloween, everyone!!