7th Birthday Party

Since school got out so early this year (yay for no snow days!), William's birthday was the first Sunday of summer vacation.  We took advantage of the holiday weekend and birthday and end of school year to have a big celebration with friends and neighbors!  The theme of 2016 continues to be Star Wars!  This is our second year of Star Wars birthdays, so we used up the rest of last year's black balloons.  This year I just bought the little helium tank at Target and we filled them ourselves instead of trekking to Party City.  William was also very proud of the way he chose to combine two of the Target cake designs onto his one big cake! 

 

 

 

All in we had about 40 people over for pizza, cake, beer, juice, bounce house and water guns!  A great way to celebrate summer and our amazing little boy!

7th Birthday

Sometimes I just stare at the pictures on my desk and wonder how did my little baby boy get to be so grown up?   This year has been all about independence, but it wasn't a battle.  It just happened.  He told us he could do stuff, and he did.  Or, more often, he just did it and we later we looked at each other and thought, "Did he just do that himself?"  And the amazing conversations we have, and the insights he offers. . . it makes me so proud to be his mom.  He's a kind, smart, funny, creative boy, and we love him so much!

After Mommy and Daddy miscommunicated on Christmas Legos and didn't buy any, he had an awesome Lego birthday!  (Something tells me this kid is going to have better birthdays than Christmas since Mommy is always so busy at Christmastime. . . .)  He received and promptly built entirely on his own the 1,990 piece Ewok Village!  

 

He received a few duplicate gifts and got to do an exchange at Target.  He picked this Storm Trooper and some Halo building sets with his credits.   Thank goodness he's good at math; because he managed to spend exactly every penny! 

Last Day of First Grade

I can't believe William has already finished first grade!  He had a great year.   It was fun to see him blossom with his reading; have his love for math continues; and see his relationships develop with new and old friends.  This year was also nothing short of a Mother Nature Miracle:  no snow days!  That means school got out before Memorial Day weekend!   In the two years prior there were three days added on each year for snow/ice/flood days.   I worked from home that day in order to volunteer as the morning greeter, which is mostly the job of signing in the tardy kids.  A usual day is 6 or 7.  On the last day there were 22!   Guess everyone is ready for summer!  

 

After school, I picked him up from YMCA early and asked if he wanted to do anything special.  He picked Chuck E. Cheese - where we hadn't been since his 5th birthday, since we have never been to the new location that opened in January 2015!  It was a good time - and he still had a voucher from his birthday party so we started with almost 1,000 points.  We collected about 300 more and then cashed in for prizes and got Taco Bell for dinner.  A truly magical day!  Haha.  Though, apparently this growing boy needs more than two items at Taco Bell.   Shortly after we got home, he told me he needed another dinner but that he'd make it himself.  He heated up a Smart Ones frozen pasta.  I had to document it!  He already makes his own breakfast and snacks; guess he doesn't need us except to stock the pantry and refrigerator.

While I was in India there was a school district wide art fair.  The guys didn't go, though, because the note about William having art on display didn't come home until his backpack on Friday - for a show on Saturday - and the backpack wasn't read until Sunday after their Cub Scout campout. . . .I was disappointed that he didn't get to see his art on display, but it's prominently displayed in our home gallery!

London - Last Day

On our last day in London, we went to Burrough Market for breakfast and lunch before our 1 p.m. ride back to the airport.   This, too, was just a few blocks from our hotel.   We had some amazing coffee and bread at Monmouth and then walked through to see the various stalls.   If we were locals, I could see myself stocking up here.   The amount of marinated olives was crazy!   John would be in heaven. 

Although a Starbucks wasn't on every corner, a Pret a Manger was.  We have these in Chicago - not on every corner, but there are two within blocks of my office - and they were in DC before we moved.  But the concentration in London was amazing.  They really touted the fact that the food was made fresh daily and that leftovers were given to homeless organizations. 

We shared one last meal of fish and chips and mushy peas before heading back to Heathrow.   I saw a couple of fun souvenirs at LHR but the giant bear and giant Lego weren't for sale.  Well, maybe the bear was, but it wasn't in my price range!  Cork (and a little carved frog from India) were very well received by the little guy when I got home.

London - More Exploring Plus a Show

We really lucked out with beautiful weather while we were there, which allowed us to walk and explore the city.  Since we did the bus tour on Sunday, our primary destination on Monday was the Tower of London and Yeoman Warder's tour.  Again, we walked from our hotel and crossed the Thames at Tower Bridge.  Here you can see how the Tower of London is at the base of Tower Bridge.   The guided tour was fantastic and added a lot to the story and sites.   It was also fun to get pictures from inside the tower grounds of the rest of the city (like the Shard again in the background).  The most interesting thing I learned on the tour was that the first zoo was on the grounds as a result of all the gifts that the king got from visiting dignitaries.  The polar bear was put on a long leash so it could go out to fish in the Thames!   The only animals still taken care of a the Tower are ravens.  I believe there are 6 left.

A key element of the Tower of London tour is a walk through to see the Crown Jewels.  It is set up with the most impressive ones in a row clear cases in the middle of a room with a moving walkway on each side to carry people steadily past.   When I walked into that room, there was one walkway much more crowded than the other, so I avoided it.  Turns out I was looking at the backside of the cases.  I got through, exited the building, found Michelle and expressed my disappointment that I missed the fancy diamonds!  She said she's wait while I went back in for another look.  After asking the docent what I was looking for, she explained that I needed to be on the other side - where all those other people where!  That side was more impressive. . .  After lunch near the Tower, we took the boat tour that was included with our bus tickets.  The boat took us to Westminster Abbey (which is right behind Parliament/Big Ben - I didn't realize that from pictures and videos I had seen before this trip).

After touring through the Abbey, which was amazing!, we had a few hours to kill before our evening entertainment at The Book of Mormon.  We walked through St. James Gardens which is basically the backyard to Buckingham Palace.  We thought we might see some Trooping of the Guard practice, but missed it.   We walked to Downing Street and found it to be heavily guarded,  You can't see #10 from the street.

Finally after 2 full days in London, we found ourselves in a pub!   We ordered the London Pale Ale and some fish and chips.  Yum and yum and yum!  Then it was time for the theatre!  I kept drawing comparisons to NYC:  St. James was like Central Park and the theatre district felt like Times Square.  The Times Square comparison was a good one since we didn't go back to our hotel that day and went to the show wearing jeans and sneakers like total tourists.  But, hey, it was a Monday. . . . 

 

The show was amazing!  We laughed all the way through it.   We also laughed when the bartender asked us if we wanted to buy thee entire bottle of Prosecco for the price of four glasses. . . .so we did!  They just keep the bottle during the show and put it out at intermission for you to grab.   Turned out to be convenient since intermission was only about 15 minutes long!   After the show, we grabbed some amazing pizza and gelato at a restaurant nearby before cabbing back to the hotel.  The cab was the first time (since the airport cab ride) that we had used anything except our feet or the pre-paid tour bus/boat.   We learned an expensive lesson that few cabs - besides the airport ones - have credit card machines.  When we got to our hotel and tried to pay via credit card and were turned down, I had to go exchange dollars for pounds at the front desk.  It was a painfully long process.  Though it was the only time we needed any cash.  My original plan had been to Uber but my app didn't recognize my American 10 digit phone number as a valid number.  I suppose I could have just updated my number with a +1 in the app.  Lesson learned.