It's London, Baby!

Our next big adventure on our holiday was to take the train down to London for a day. It was pretty cool to see, I must say!

We started out at 221B Baker Street to visit Sherlock Holmes' house. Unfortunately, he wasn't in for the day.

Then we headed over to Westminster Abbey and took a tour. You can't take pictures inside the church, but here we are right after exploring for a bit.

Riley Cates and I were a bit "Westminster Crabby" after the tour (it is hard for kids to look around a place for so long!), so we took a break and had some oranges. A little snack goes a long way!

Then we got to see this guy. What's not to like about a giant blue rooster?

We were in Trafalgar Square, so we climbed up on the great big lions.

It's pretty high up there! You can get a good view!

We took a stroll through St. James's Park.

It was nice to cool off in the shade for a bit! (This was when we started complaining of our bones hurting. We had done a LOT of walking!)

But it was a good walk because we got to see Buckingham Palace. These soldiers were amazing to watch!

It was a quick day in London, but I am so glad we got to explore!

Blenheim Palace

FINALLY! Pictures from our holiday! I know you are so excited!

On our first day, we went to Blenheim Palace, which is where Winston Churchill was born. This was our view as we walked up. I told Mommy that we needed to live in a house like this!

We took a very informative tour of the house. I liked listening to the headphones with Aunt Sarah. They also gave us a game for kids... We had to search for animals throughout the house. That made it much more interesting for me and Riley Cates.

This is the other side of the house and part of the gardens.

It was a lovely place for a picnic, even though it was a quite sunny!

After lunch we explored the gardens. My legs were getting tired by this time, so I stopped for a little break.

We made sure to take time to smell the roses!

They had a butterfly garden with loads of butterflies everywhere!

And here is the best family shot we could get with the palace in the background!

I would recommend this as a fun place to go visit!

Holiday

We just got home from a fun-filled holiday (that's what they call vacations over here). We have so many pictures to sort through before I show them to you, but I thought I would go ahead and show you my favorite parts of the trip...

Riding the train was high on the list, of course.

We loved having picnics in fun, new places.

And what is a holiday without ice cream?

I may even add seeing Big Ben in my top favorite things... Mainly because Mater was inside Big Ben in Cars 2.

I'm sure Mommy and Daddy are glad that these are my highlights from our trip! I really did enjoy all that we did (or at least most of it), but I am a 4 year old afterall!

I will say that we all felt like Riley Cates at the end of each day...

Yes, she really is sleeping like that! We were so worn out from walking everywhere and seeing things! I even told Mommy that my bones were all tired, and I think the grown-ups felt the same way! That's the true sign of a good time!

Aunt Sarah Comes to Visit!

We have been counting down the days until Aunt Sarah came to visit! Look! There she is!

We ran over to her... We had lots to tell her!

We are so glad she is here for a visit! (Look! You can see our Baby in this picture! He is excited too!)

Williams-Brice?

When we took Mommy to the doctor the other day, I saw this thing sticking above the trees. So of course I asked Mommy and Daddy if that were where the Gamecocks played!

We drove over to the stadium to check it out. Sadly, it is not Williams-Brice, but they do play football there. Well, not American football, but it was pretty cool to see!

And even though we are far from Columbia, we proudly support our Gamecocks!

Waiting

We had to take Mommy to the doctor last week so that we could see our baby brother! We got to go to the scan with her, which was so fun! We heard his heart beating, and we got to see some of his bones (my favourite part!). He is getting really big (like really big... he is measuring off of the growth charts!), and everything looks great! It won't be long before we meet him! 

Then we had to wait for Mommy while she talked to the doctor. This is what waiting looks like...

We were glad for a good report!

Swimming Lessons

I have been counting down the days until today for some time now. It was my first swimming lesson! Hooray! I was a little nervous about the idea of putting my face in the water, but it was my first time in a pool in over a year, so I think I did pretty well! And don't worry, I practiced putting my face in the water during bath time tonight. I'll be ready for next week's lesson! I can't wait to go back! Here are a few pictures from today's session. In case you can't tell, I am in the far lane with the blue goggles. There were lots of new friends there with me too!

Climber

This is where we found Riley Cates tonight. Glad the heater wasn't on... Glad she didn't fall... So many things to be thankful for!

Though I'm not sure that's what Riley Cates was thinking. She seemed to be enjoying herself very much!

A is for Apple

We learned about the letter a this week, which, of course, meant that we got to spend lots of time with apples! We checked them out and found the star of seeds in the middle.

Then we painted with cut up apples. This picture so clearly captures our personalities... I am carefully trying to get the stem of the apple so that I don't get any paint on me, while Riley Cates is covered in paint already!

Later in the week, we cut out the apples we painted and made patterns.

We also practiced recognizing numbers and putting them in order. And by we, I mean that I did that. Riley Cates was much more interested in combing my hair!

We also played a game with pretend apples. I had to count the dots on the dice and put that many apples on the tree.

We painted lots this week, which is always a favorite thing of ours to do. We made an apple tree!

And we even painted with an apple that was rolling around in a box! That was pretty cool!

We made apples that looked like we had eaten them. Riley Cates gets so serious when she is working! She also uses enough paint to paint a house, but whatever.

I got to practice graphing different kinds of apples.

And we turned a letter a into an apple to help us remember what a says!

Oh, I almost forgot that my favorite part of the week was the yummy apple snacks we made!

We got to make AND EAT!!! apple fritters!

Yummy!

And Mommy made some delicious apple cinnamon bread that we had with our breakfast this morning. I like weeks when we get to cook and eat special things!

And here is the wall of some of our work for this week!