September 2016

September was a crazy month of moving into our rental house and trying to get settled before the kids started school. Our furniture didn't arrive until late September so we were sleeping on mattress pads for about a month. Fortunately our landlord left us a table and chairs so we had a place to eat. We were basically camping in our house for our first month!

Part of September was searching for furniture to fit in our rental house. Houses here have very little closets - our house had a closet in the master bedroom but not in any of the other bedrooms. And when our furniture finally arrived some of it didn't fit up our narrow staircase!

We started our furniture search for desks at John Lewis, our favorite department store in London. We also found time to walk down by the Thames for some pictures!

Sphinx at the base of Cleopatra's Needle

Thames River and Big Ben in the background

The school uniforms are much more formal here - skirt for Rachel and tie for Carson every day. And blazers too! And even a hat for Rachel. Wow, don't they look 'brilliant'!

Since I was terrified to drive on the left side of the road, we lived our first month of school without a car. We sure got in great shape walking back and forth to school each day (about a mile each way). With the nice weather it wasn't so bad. By the end of September I took some driving lessons and we finally bought a car. Its a Nissan Qashqai, a family car by UK standards but it would be considered tiny in the US. Its nice to have transportation to get around! Here we are taking scooters to school, hoping it would be faster then walking but not really.

The kids school pictures came out great!

Our rental house has a jungle gym outside including swings, a slide, a climbing wall and a picnic table next to the swings. We had some warm days before school started and a few evenings we took our dinner out to the picnic table. We discovered that as soon as the sun goes down the mosquitos come out! We felt very lucky to have such a warm summer, several Brits have told me this was the warmest summer they can remember for years.

 A park nearby with fun things to climb on.

August 2016

After much searching, we found a house to rent in a town that we like very much. As much as we like London, we decided to live outside the city where we could afford a bigger house and a yard for the kids to play in. The public transportation is so great here that our home is only just a 20 minute train ride into London. The only drawback to our rental house is that its not available until August 20, so we will stay in our hotel until then. Fortunately schools start in early September here so we will still have time to unpack before school starts.

We also spent time visiting schools for the kids in our new town and found schools that we are happy with. Carson will be going to a co-ed primary school for ages 3-11. He will be playing rugby in the fall, 'football' (i.e. soccer) in the winter, and cricket in the spring. Rachel chose an all-girls school for ages 3-18 that she just loves. Normally children here change schools at age 11, but since her school goes all the way to high school she won't have to change schools during our stay in the UK.

In between our trips out to our new town finding housing and schools, we were able to do a little bit more exploring in London. We had a day at the London Zoo in Regents Park, a great zoo that we really enjoyed. Here is the entrance to Regents Park, a typical park entrance here in London. Very lavish and decorative gates are everywhere here!

Penguin Feeding

Bird Show

Carson's first haircut in the UK was at a place called 'Jack the Clipper'.

Prices are in British Pounds, that's 1.3 times a dollar!

We visited Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in Piccadilly Circus. Here are the kids standing next to the replica of the world's tallest man.

We found a great playground in Mayfair with a tire swing and a see saw. I guess playground equipment is universal, very similar to what you might find in the states. Great fun for the kids and a great way to get out some of their energy. Very handy when you are living in a small hotel room for several weeks!

Trafalgar Square seems to attract local artists that often use chalk to create artwork right on the sidewalk. We were amazed at the picture of the woman below rendered in chalk, just incredible!

We ventured out to Greenwich one day, accompanied by Aunt Ginie who happened to be visiting London during our stay at the hotel! What a great coincidence! We had a tour of the Cutty Sark ship and the kids learned all about what it was like to live on a ship for a long period of time.

We had lunch at Byron's Burgers, an American-style burger and fry restaurant. Their Byron sauce is the closest thing we've found to fry sauce in the UK.

Greenwich is famous for the Prime Meridian, longitude 0°, which goes right through Greenwich. Since there was a queue (that's UK speak for a line) a mile long to get a photo at the Prime Meridian, we settled for a picture just 5 yards away near a big clock.

Our first show in London was a kids musical of Scooby Doo! It was great fun, the kids loved seeing their favorite cartoon characters on stage. And luckily there was a Five Guys Burgers & Fries restaurant right next to the theater, YUM! A little taste of America!

Late July 2016

Greetings from London! We arrived safely and our driver got us straight to our hotel. Even though it was 8pm it only felt like the afternoon so we walked around to explore London a bit and finally had dinner at about 10pm. Late nights and late mornings were part of our first week here while we adjusted to the time change. Our Marriott hotel was great - a central location in Mayfair, walking distance to everything. And we loved the concierge lounge where they served breakfast in the morning, tea-time just after noon, happy hour before dinner and evening snacks and drinks after dinner. With so much to explore we were walking miles each day, not something the kids were thrilled about. We decided they would earn £1 for every mile walked. This was a great motivator for them and a chance for them to collect some of their own British Pounds.

Here we are on our second day in London, trying to see everything! Big Ben! Buckingham Palace! Trafalgar Square!

As we were walking towards Whole Foods Market one day we discovered a toy store called Hamley's. This is no ordinary toy store, its got to be one of the world's largest! Six full floors of toys, everything you can imagine. And the employees are scattered throughout the store demonstrating some of the toys so you can see them and try them. What an amazing place. When we reached the Lego floor we were amazed at all the life-size replicas made from Legos. The Crown Jewels! A Palace Guard! Queen Elizabeth with her dog! A Star Wars fighter jet! This is now the kid's favorite place to go in London.

We were able to find a park in the city for some play time. This park has a sign at the entrance: "Grown-ups must be accompanied by a child to enter." Love it!

Our day at the Tower of London was great. So much history here! We had a rare glimpse of Tower Bridge with the draw bridge up as we went by.

Early July 2016

July was a time of packing up and getting ready for our time in the UK. We shipped 7 crates of belongings off to London by boat, hoping they survive the journey and we receive them safely sometime in the fall. We sold both of our cars after deciding not to try to ship over our American gas-guzzling cars. Fortunately we had time for a few fun things before heading over to Europe. Here are the kids with Grandma who lives close to us in Utah, we sure will miss her. 

Our local cub scout leader was kind enough to let Rachel and Carson test out their bottle rockets in his back yard since they won't be around for the bottle rocket event in August. Those bottle rockets sure can fly!

We stopped in New England to visit family for a week before heading over to the UK. And it was a great way to break up the flight, easier to do two 5-hour flights then one 10-hour flight. We made it up to the North Maine woods to visit Grammy and Grampy at camp. Even though it was only for a few days, we had great weather, great fishing, and some much-needed R&R.

This year the kids tested out the kayak on their own! They did great and are starting to get the hang of it.

The LL Bean stop is mandatory as you drive between Maine and Boston.

This year we made a slight detour to Marlborough to see my cousin Dave Champeau's new restaurant, Kindles Pizzeria. What an amazing place! He imported an authentic wood fired oven from Italy and he fuels his fire with real wood. The result is the most amazing pizza you have ever tasted. Rachel is our pizza eater and she absolutely loved the wood fired pizza. Carson is a pasta boy so he tried the pasta and thought it was the best he had ever eaten (and he has eaten a LOT of pasta). The next time we are near Boston we will be back! Great job Dave!!

We also spent a day with Grandad but since Pine Lodge was occupied we had a day in Marblehead. It was fun to walk around Fort Sewall with the kids, a place our Grandma used to take us when we were kids.

We also stopped at the Peabody Essex Museum where we found some fun kids activities.

We had difficulty deciding what to do with our cat, Gracie, while we went off to the UK. We thought about taking her with us, but the airplanes and hotels would have made things difficult. Since Pete and Jen were thinking about getting a cat friend for Pretzel, we decided to take Gracie to their house. Here are the cats together, they could pass for sisters and are getting along very well. We miss Gracie but take comfort knowing that she is happy and having fun with her new sister. Thanks Pete & Jen!!