London

We had a great "end of summer" trip to London to do some shopping and visit John's extended family.

Abbie loved the welcome cat and the child-sized robes in our London hotel:





I dragged everyone to the Boden store (a favorite catalog of mine for years):





We all managed to come home with a little something.

Brendan was most interested in the Disney store. He really wanted these "build your own RC" cars that he'd seen advertised. Sadly, he learned that the real product doesn't always live up the advertised image. He was sadly disappointed and saved his money for another purchase.





We stumbled upon Chipotle on the way home. Talk about making John's trip!





The next morning we hard a "whirlwind" trip to Harrods. We thought we'd have more time, but John's cousin made great time getting into the city and we only had about a half hour.











Can you tell where we spent all of our time?

We met up with John's cousin Martin and his kids Bailey and Maisey. We terrorized (literally) Abbie at the London Dungeons, rode the London Eye, and had a pizza lunch to wait out a rain storm.





The next day we headed out to visit Paddy and Joy. The cousins had clearly bonded already.





We met up with Steven and Sharon for dinner and then enjoyed a few games of bowling with Martin and his kids. Abbie begged to spend the night with Maisey, but I got the dreaded 11pm phone call to pick her up. She was still traumatized from the London Dungeon visit, so I took pity on her. It was a little challenging to drive a stick shift car from the "passenger" seat and to stay on the left side of the road! Never mind the roundabouts! The next day, we met up with Steven and Sharon again and had a fun outing to a movie theater where we had US sized concessions and no intermission. Abbie stayed home and got a french manicure. They also gave her a broken cell phone with a slide out keyboard. It was pretty much Abbie's best present ever. She spent the rest of the trip "texting" her friends and family around the world. In the evening we celebrated 50 years of wedded bliss for Paddy and Joy. (warning: tons of family photos to follow)