a wale of a time

Hey guys!

Guess I should get around to posting that trip of ours. Wales is THE BEST!! After we spent a week in Madrid and Carcassonne (I'll eventually post those pics...) we went to London to stay with our BFFs Mark and Julie. We hadn't seen them since Rhoda was a newborn and now they have an almost one year-old in addition to almost four year-old Henry, who was about Rhoda's age when they moved. THINGS HAVE CHANGED. So we made the most of our time with them and decided to spend the few days we had together being super relaxed in Wales. We stayed on a farm and fed the chickens and did absolutely nothing but talk and tell jokes. Okay, we didn't do absolutely nothing—we had a proper Sunday roast at a pub, we went and saw some natural wonders, we went to the beach, we saw many a castle, and we drove. A lot. The driving wasn't too bad, though Rhoda cries every time we put her in the car seat now because she thinks she'll be sitting in it for at least four hours.

On to the photographic evidence of our trip:

Some pretty views of the Pembrokeshire coast and the Green Bridge of Wales

The local castle, Carew, where we saw some awesome LARPers having a joust

Some photos Robbie took on his run around the 'hood in Narberth, where we were staying

The ducks and chickens on the farm, plus a pretty sunset, plus me taking a picture of Julie taking a picture of the sunset (META!)

The cutest beach town, Tenby, where a seagull dropped a hermit crab on Mark's foot and scared the crap out of everyone

Teatime in Cardiff, plus a jam jar that made me laugh a lot for some reason. Welsh is just so funny to try and read out loud. Also, you can make lots of puns out of Caerphilly. Just try it!

Visiting Caerphilly Castle on probably the most beautiful day in creation

My only three pictures from London. We just didn't spend a ton of time there, which is sad, but I've spent so much time there and I feel like we'll go back again so it wasn't such a bummer to miss out this trip. Plus, the main perk of visiting for us was spending time with the Taylors so we didn't plan anything for London anyway, haha. We got to go to the park by their house (that tiny wood house is the best) and I got to enjoy walking by The Bird in Hand, their local pub. I wish that American bars had better names.

And, lest we forget, we did spend a good 24 non-consecutive hours in airports and flying on planes. So, there's some documentation of that too. I am a pro at the airport with a toddler. Ask me anything!

fête paradiso

Well, you know what they say—the days are long and the weeks are short. Actually, I think they say that the years are short but right now it's the weeks that are feeling really short. I'm now 36 weeks pregnant and we've been trying to fit in lots of last minute activities to celebrate the end of the summer and to celebrate the end of just the two of us. 

So! A recap of a couple of things we've done. We went to NYC a couple weekends ago (and I actually went on another whirlwind 24 hour trip a few weeks ago with Julie and Henry before they left for London) and spent most of our time having no agenda and spending QT together over donuts every day for breakfast and with old friends. I felt bad that we weren't able to see everyone that we wanted to see over the couple of days that we were there, but it all boiled down to us not having a schedule and me not feeling like I wanted to lug my 35 week pregnant self across town because I needed to stop to go to the bathroom every 5 seconds and I was just tired! But we did get to fit in some fun excursions. Our trip was accidentally well-coordinated with a visit from our college buddies Carrie and Courtney who were in town from Utah, so we met up with them and Kate/Regan/Gwen for a Utah reunion on Governors Island. I'd always wanted to go out there but every time we go to New York it's either way too hot or way too cold and it just doesn't feel like a good time to check it out. Fête Paradiso was also going on that day so we got to check out the "vintage" (their word, not mine) amusement park rides. I use quotation marks around "vintage" because I'd say they were more, er, "antique." Like, I wasn't really sure if everything would fall apart once the rides started going. But they were really cool to look at! Apparently some of the parts of the carousels actually dated back to 1850's France so that was pretty cool. The girls and Robbie all decided to go on the swings which sounded like a safe idea at the time but by the end of the ride we were all feeling kind of queasy. They should have had a warning saying that ride wasn't safe for adults. Robbie and Regan also went on a rollercoaster that they looked like they'd fly off of any second and after that everyone just stuck to the more benign carousel rides.

The rest of the weekend involved good eats and laying around in the park and catching up with some more friends that used to live in DC and really just spending time together as just the two of us. It was a perfect weekend with perfect weather and I'm excited to go back again some day when Li'l Ham can enjoy the sights and sounds and not be leaning on my bladder. Speaking of Li'l Ham, here's what he/she looked like at 35 weeks:

I still haven't learned how to turn to the side in pictures so I don't look like a chubby bunny. So sue me.

"that's why i come up here—naaatuuuure!"

We went on a couple of tiny adventures while we were in Banner Elk. We took a slightly scary ride along the family property in a Polaris (I had my seatbelt on at least?) and Robbie and Christian had to do some dead tree removal along a narrow path so that we could keep going. We also had Sadie the family dog along for company and she was hilarious and sat on Robbie's lap the whole time. Christian's uncle Doug was our chauffeur and showed us a great time—he is really fun but he has a really thick Southern accent and Christian had to translate for me a couple of times. 

Later we went on a little nature walk around a little forest in the town that also runs through a college campus. The college looked more like a summer camp and I can't help but wonder what possesses people to want to go to college in such a small town, but that's probably what most people envision when I tell them I went to BYU.

Finally we made a quick pit stop at Mast General Store in Boone, which has a separate shop dedicated entirely to like 500 different kinds of candy (and consequently 500 different kinds of annoying kids packed in the store). Normally this would be my dream come true but since I'm off the sauce I just had to admire from a distance. Sigh...

Thanks Christian and Carlita for such a fun weekend! Can't wait to officially be adopted into your family so we can do this every year. Kidding? Maybe?