We went to England at the beginning of the month for just shy of 2 weeks. It was such a wonderful trip. The primary purpose of the trip was to celebrate John’s mom’s 70th and our new baby niece’s Christening, for which we were honored to be named Godparents. We did so much that I don’t really know where to start.
We decided not to rent a car, since Michelle and James would be off work as well and we figured two cars would be enough between all of us since we’d normally be going places together. That meant poor James was chauffeuring us here, there, and everywhere – but always with a smile, even when he was knocked out by a nasty ear and sinus infection, bless his heart.
We were fortunate that even though we were not that mobile, our friends from when we lived in Basingstoke – the Carters, Gemma, and the Roberts – were able to drive up to see us one day. We have 5 kids + one on the way between us all, so it was a lot of fun seeing each other and the kids and catching up on everything with them. The Carters are actually moving to Indy with Rich’s work in January, so we are so excited to be able to see them a lot more soon! Layla was funny, because she was not too bothered about me holding Maddie most of the time, but as soon as these friends showed up with their kids she got pretty protective, not wanting Mommy to hold anyone but her. Compounding the problem was apparently Rich and Anita’s daughter loves dark haired women (oddly, since they are all fair (I’m thinking something to do with her previous life)), so she kept wanting me to hold her. Layla would insist on being held, too, and try to push Sophie away, but it didn’t deter Sophie. I tried to tell them they were going to have to sort it out because they are going to be spending a lot of time together soon!
The big Christening/70th birthday party (M&M party! – Madeline and Maddie) was a great success. Maddie was Christened in the same church we had Hayden and Layla Christened in last year, which we found out later was the church where John’s dad’s grandparents were married! That blew my mind. I guess it’s not AS shocking considering it’s England and they have many more historic structures than we do in America, but it’s a fairly modest sized church and I consider it an unfathomable coincidence that Hayden and Layla’s (and Maddie’s) great-great-grandparents were married there. Anyway, Maddie did very well in the limelight, and our kids were also well behaved which we were happy about. There were plenty of M&Ms being consumed by one Mr. Hayden, as well as cake, so by the end of the night he was literally running/dancing around in circles with some balloons on a sugar high, but I’ll take that over a meltdown, right!
We did some other fun things which I will mention but try not to go into too much detail for fear this post will be too long. We went to a zoo with some of John’s college friends and their families, went to London with Granddad (unfortunate, rainy weather but Hayden got to see Big Ben which he has been waiting months for since it’s featured in Cars 2 which he was obsessed by all summer, and Mommy and Daddy got Pizza Express which they were happy about, plus London is so great that even if the weather doesn’t cooperate, the sites are still amazing, and last thing about it, it was Maddie’s first time out in the city and she did AMAZING – she only woke briefly to feed while we were eating and we didn’t hear a peep from her the rest of the time!), celebrated the evening of Madeline’s actual birthday in an Indian restaurant while an “Indian Elvis” entertained us, went on a grown-up night out with our friends while the kids spent the night at Camp Granddad’s (which they loved and we got glowing reports on them afterwards), went to Legoland twice (can I mention again what a trooper James is??), and sometimes in the midst of all this action, we even relaxed with MMM&J. 🙂
I think that’s enough for this post. I left out so much stuff, I might do another one to try to capture a little more but you are released for now. 😉
Wow, well I don’t even know where to start with this one. We took a family trip down to Orlando to do Disney. John’s mom and sister have a time share down there so we stayed with them and Michelle’s boyfriend, James. It was such a great time!
couldn’t believe it, because he is normally so cautious. He started with space mountain. It’s completely dark in there, so I’m not sure how much he really liked it. He never wanted to go on it again, but he really didn’t show any emotion about the ride afterwards one way or the other. At Animal Kingdom he went on Everest, which was very fast and goes backwards and in the dark and all sorts, and he seemed to really like that. Everyone loved the Star Wars ride at Hollywood Studios, as well as the Buzz Lightyear ride there. In fact, those were 2 of the group’s favorite rides, although overall Hollywood Studios was my personal 3rd favorite of the 4. We did tons of rides, but we tried to have shorter days at the parks so we could also have some down time at the condo. Michelle is pregnant, Madeline has a leg that gives her trouble, and the two kids – well, need some downtime! So most days we had pool time as well. One evening we drove down to my aunt’s house to see my aunt, uncle, cousins, their kids, etc. My brother and his family were also in Orlando at the same time, so they went to my aunt’s as well. We also ran into them at Magic Kingdom on the way to Tom Sawyer’s island!
has room for 10, so we stayed there and it was a really nice place. It was a fun group – Madeline, Michelle, Deirdre, Michelle’s friend Kayleigh and Johnny, and Johnny’s 12 year old son Tyler. (And John, Hayden, and me of course.) We had mostly good weather. It was raining when we got there but the other days were mostly sunny but a little cool. When we got there we went to see my aunt and uncle, Jeaneen and Alvin. We couldn’t get in to the timeshare until 4 pm, so they were kind enough to host us at their house. We had some lunch and took a walk. They live out in the country and a foal had been born in the last week so we walked about 1/4 of a mile to see that. It started raining when we got there! My uncle tried to hurry ahead to get the car to drive us home, but we were such fast walkers that by the time he picked us up we were about 100 yards from his house. ha! Sunday we hung out around the pool in the complex where the timeshare is. It was a beautiful day and probably the warmest one we had. Hayden went in the pool briefly, but the water was not too warm so we couldn’t keep him in long. We managed to keep him in the shade quite a bit since we brought a little UV-blocking tent with us that pops up really easily. That night we met up with my aunt and uncle again as well as my cousin and her family for dinner.
perfect place to take Hayden at his age. We watched a couple of the shows, and Hayden was actually pretty interested in them. During the first show we sat through, I was going ‘Ooooo’ whenever something cool would happen – as you do – but that would cause him to stick his lip out and start crying!! So I had to curb that (although he seemed to get used to it as I accidentally did it a couple of more times that day and he seemed ok with it). When we saw Shamu’s show, they have this little Shamu chant with arm motions that they have the crowd do and we were making his arms do the motions while we shouted ‘Shamu,’ and he loved that! We have done it several times since then and he still gets a big smile. Shamu!
it was too cold for a water park that day. Wed it was still fairly cold out, but warmer. It’s a nice little water park. There is a slide that goes through a dolphin tank which looked pretty cool. The line was really long for that one, though, and since we had a plane to catch we didn’t have time to wait for it. Michelle, Johnny, Kayleigh, and I went on a group ride where we were all in a raft together, and it was quite fun because we picked up a lot of speed but at the end of the slide it stops very abruptly and we had been going so fast that we ended up crashing into each other. Kayleigh and I knocked heads and now I have a big black eye!! I look like I’ve been beaten up. Makeup doesn’t even cover it. 😦
Hayden finally got to meet Auntie Michelle!!! He loved that she came to visit with her boyfriend Stuart. Hayden seemed to like both of them very much! He smiled lots around Michelle and even fell asleep in her arms a couple of times and he hates falling asleep as he is always worried he is missing out on something!!
we went to the vet, and then gave us big hugs when we got back. It was really nice to have a close friend here during that time. I probably would have spent my days moping around, but because she was here we got out and walked around Indianapolis, shopped, ate, and went down to Bloomington, my old university town. She definitely helped us feel better.
Hayden and Layla's Place 