London with no kids!

Also in August we took advantage of E's sister, Aunt EJ, and ditched her and the boys for the weekend to head into London for a weekend of fun. The main reason for the trip was seeing U2 play in Wembley Stadium. It was awesome. We had pretty good seats (considering there were 88,000 people in the stadium!) and had a direct view of the stage... even if Bono did look like an ant up there!

Outside the stadium before the concert. See how cool he looks? We had to work really hard at looking cool enough to go to a rock concert!

Bono... oooh.

Us at the concert. Yes, that is Bono in the background and my husband is wearing hearing protection. Wuss. It actually wasn't as loud as I was afraid it would be. But I don't think the baby enjoyed it, he didn't move throughout the entire show. And, the other funny thing was, you know how when you hear a deep bass you can feel it vibrate in your chest? Well, I could feel it vibrating in my belly... it was a little odd!

The edge.

There were several really cool parts of the concert. They started out playing some of their newer stuff, which was neat, but as soon as they started to play "Beautiful Day" the stadium erupted. It was so cool to hear everyone get so excited. Then a couple of songs later they played "Elevation" and literally the entire stadium was jumping up and down. So neat. They also played "With or Without You" (my favoritest song ever) as a second encore. I was getting really, really worried they weren't going to play it, and when they came back out I was saying, with or without you, with or without you. And clearly Bono heard me because there it was!

But the neatest part of the whole show was when Bono just stopped singing in "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" and the entire stadium, all 88,000 people sang the chorus and the whole next verse clear as anything! It was so cool. He sort of looked like he thought it was pretty neat too.

After the concert we joined this insanely long "queue" to get on a train back into London. I was amazed, we just kept moving, and they had like five trains loading at once. Really, really impressive.

The next day we wandered around London a little bit, and lunch and then went to see Wicked. Our seats were amazing, fourth row! So that was pretty cool too, and probably more appropriate for the prego mommy.

All in all, a really neat time. Thanks Aunt EJ for keeping the boys!

Leeds Castle

Yes, it's yet another castle... like I said, this has become my travel journal. So no eye rolling, don't read it if you're bored of castles!

While E's sister was visiting for the month of August, we did some local touring. One Saturday we ventured towards Leeds Castle, down south east of London. After waaaaay too long sitting in London traffic, we finally made it. The grounds and exterior of the castle are amazing... but the interior is a little bit like Henry VIII meets my Grandmother. It's been redecorated a few too many times if you ask me, and has a bit of a 1950s flair to it at the moment. Very interesting.

It was built in the 11oos, and became a royal palace for for King Edward I in the 1200s. It's most famous residents were King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon, who he divorced because she only birthed a girl. (He had to change the official religion of England from Catholicsm to allow this... it's good to be king.) Then he married his second wife who he eventually beheaded because she too only produced a girl. (Insert me singing the Henry VIII, I am song here...)

Then his daughter by his second wife, later Queen Elizabeth I, was imprisoned here while her big sister was king. See, good old King Henry had a little problem with succession... he could only produce girls and sickly boys. And even they all had different mothers. Ahem... there was a little beheading and divorcing going on. Anyway, when his only son died very young, his eldest daughter Mary took the throne. But she was Catholic... very Catholic, and there was dissension. So when she died of stomach cancer, again without managing to produce an heir of her own, her little (Protestant) sister Elizabeth took the throne. And also managed to die without producing an heir. So the throne of England went to a cousin, James who just happened to be the son of Mary Queen of Scots and the King of Scotland... thus uniting the thrones of England and Scotland for the first time. But I digress from the castle at hand. We visited Mary Queen of Scots when were up in Edinburgh a few weeks later... so you'll hear more then. Or feel free to ignore. Back to Leeds.

Me and little guy with the castle in the back.

Daddy and big man.

Little e looking adorable in his Aunt's hat.

There was a big person's hedge maze that E and EJ went through. The boys and I stuck to the little person's dirt maze and had just as much fun.

One cool dude... with one little dude running like a mad man behind him!

N and e in the courtyard of the castle.

The castle is actually built on two different islands with a moat running around, and in between the two buildings. Very cool, and I would imagine, very hard to attack. And yes, there is a picture of my belly for all of you who have been asking. I'd like to say it's still that small, but these were taken about a month ago... so you'll just have to imagine!

Little e with the world's largest leaves. I just thought the size difference was funny! Like I said, the grounds were amazing! There were gardens, playgrounds, the mazes... and oh yeah, the moats which provided beautiful picture taking opportunities. There was even a wedding couple there getting their pictures done. They couldn't have picked a better backdrop!

Mmmm... blueberries!

So all summer long I made a point of getting out with the boys every Friday to explore our local area. I had heard about a blueberry picking farm, and not being able to resist blueberries, I grabbed a friend and her kids, and we headed out!

I had a not-so-positive blueberry picking trip in Alaska, so I was cautiously optimistic, but let me tell you, the English know how to grow their berries! Here is little e eating waaaay more berries than he actually got in his bin.

N showing what a good berry looks like. Yummy! The bushes were just at little boy height... but for some reason it was easier for them to put the berries directly in their mouths than in the buckets.

My little guys and some blueberry bushes. (Much larger than in Alaska!)

N in the car getting ready to head home. He really thought he was just going to hold his bucket of berries on this lap and munch all the way home. I did eventually manage to get him to reluctantly trade his bucket of berries for a PB&J.

The berries we brought home. Yes, that's a lot of berries. And yes, we ate them all. And in fact we went back a few weeks later and picked almost as many again. You better bet we'll be back next year!

Audley End House

Back in July we toured one of the many local estate homes in the area. This house was originally built in the 1600s to impress the king. And quite impressive it still is. There is a huge park land around it, including this large duck pond. We ate our picnic lunch right in front of the pond and I think the ducks got more bread than the boys did!

One of the neatest aspects were the working kitchen and laundry areas, complete with period dressed kitchen and laundry maids. N was a little frightened of the huge fire in the kitchen, but I was fascinated by all the activity... and how few people there were to take care of this entire, huge house! Seriously people, I can't keep my little three bedroom house clean... I would have been useless in the 18th century!

Where should we go next?

In the back garden, there was this large fountain, and the boys had a ton of fun running around it... especially through the puddle on one side. They were soaked by the time we left, but I think they enjoyed themselves.

Here are daddy and N taking in the scenery, I believe at this moment N was asking about 15 "why" questions one following another. Yup, he's four!

When life gives you mole hills...

Make sandcastles!

Yup, this is how we entertain ourselves these days!

4th of July festivities... in England!

I know, it's a bit strange, but it's true, we do have a huge 4th of July celebration here. There are enough Americans around to make it a very, very large event.

We couldn't believe how big it was, or how many people there were! There were even full up carnival rides. We told the boys they could pick one ride, and surprise, surprise, they chose the "choo choo." So we payed our money and let them go... only after they got on did we realize that most of the other parents were riding with their kids. We were too cheap for that (great parenting at work.)

So when little e started to scream in terror, he was on his own (well, he had N to help him out I suppose, but he was wearing his hearing protection, so he probably couldn't hear his little brother screaming!) You can see that he wasn't to thrilled with the ride.

However when it was over he ran up to me and said, "I have good day on choo choo mommy!" Go figure.

Then it was dinner time, we were still pretty close to the loud carnival rides, so N thought he still needed his ear muffs on. You can't be too careful!

Finally we found the bouncy castles where we camped out for the rest of the evening and let the boys bounce the night away. There was this one where kids could get on and try to push each other off pedestals with this padded bar. N wanted to do it, so E went with him. It's hard to tell in the little picture, but N is laughing hysterically. I think he thought pushing his daddy over was pretty much the funniest thing he had ever done!

Get the Rocky theme ready!

There was also free face painting, so we thought we'd let the boys try. They've never had their faces painted before, and e's lasted like eight minutes before he smeared it all over himself. N did manage to keep his for the rest of the night.

The cutest puppy ever...

One darling kitty cat...

Finally, to finish off the night we watched a concert by "Tops in Blue" which is always a family favorite, and then waited for the fireworks. One little boy thought the fireworks were OK, the other one was absolutely terrified. He was literally shaking with fear. Even with his hearing protection on, he wanted no part of that. He clug to daddy, looking the other way, and most of the time even covered his eyes. I felt so bad for him... but I did manage to get this adorable picture of my little scared kitty!

It's tulip time! (Or at least it was three months ago...)

So I'm still behind... but also still feeling the need to post in chronological order. So the next big event was our last minute trip to the Netherlands to see the tulips. Literally I put this trip together about a week before we went, I had heard the tulips were looking good, so we went for it.

The tulips were in fact looking good, the were lovely... my children however, were not. It was just one of those weekends where they were dead set against everything we tried to do, or get them to eat, or, well, you get the point. It's one of those trips that I probably won't look back on with a great deal of fondness because of the whining and complaining. But, as I said, the tulips were beautiful, amazing, and I'm really glad I saw them!

Our first stop was kinderdijk, a world heritage site that has 19 original working windmills built in the 1700s. It was just a huge plain completely filled with windmills to keep it from flooding itself. It was really cool. The boys loved running around here, and was pretty much the only part of the trip they enjoyed!

To get to and from this village we took a road that literally ended in water. We had to take this little ferry across the canal, so Dutch!

The next day we drove past all the tulip fields, unfortunately the two or three days prior to our visit were prime tulip harvesting, so a lot of the fields were bare.

Apparently if we had been just a couple of days earlier they would have been carpets of flowers. Oh well. However, we did see lots and lots of tulips at the Keukenhof Gardens, the most famous tulip garden in the world and the reason thousands of people flock to the Netherlands in the spring.

I can only describe this place as an amusement park with flowers. It was that big. A map was required, there were different "lands" with different styles of gardens, and it was packed to the gills with tourists and tulips. I seriously didn't think there were that many tulips in the whole world. Here are a couple of pictures, but they don't do this place anywhere near justice.

Yes, many of the flowers were taller than the boys!

In the middle of the gardens they had a children's play area with a swing for N and a little tunnel for e to run through.

E and N even got to practice their walking on water skills!

The next day we headed into Amsterdam. We thought we had a fun day planned for the boys including a train ride into the city, lunch at a crepe resturant. (Hello, pancakes with bananas and chocolate for lunch!) A canal boat ride, and maybe one sightseeing stop at the Anne Frank house. Yeah right. It became aparent after the crepe lunch that no one ate that any sightseeing was not going to be an option that day. So we mostly rode the canal boats and walked around the city while trying to prevent total melt down. We were semi-successful.

That night (and not a moment too soon) we got on our overnight ferry and headed back to England. But not before we stopped for dinner at the only place our boys would eat anything at all weekend long... a dutch McDonald's. Ahhh, the joys of parenting.