Bethany and Joel

Woohoo!

I love having family come!

We got home from Vienna on March 10 at 11 p.m.,

then headed back to the airport on March 11 at 10 a.m. to pick up

Bethany and Joel!

It is so nice to have family members experience a taste of our lives here.

Knowing it is best to keep them awake even after the long flight, we went straight to

Windsor Castle

This is a cool approach I've not experienced before...

 

I asked Rick if this is really how he wanted to be remembered....

 

and got this....
I take that as yes, yes this is how I want to be remembered.

Beautiful garden...

 

Springtime in England is amazing with the daffodils.

The bulbs are planted under the grass rather than in flowerbeds.

Tis beautiful.  As is Bethany.



 Lovely place.

 

The next day took us to

Stonehenge

It costs a fortune to go into Stonehenge, and you still can't get very close,

so we chose to see it from a further distance.



(Yes, it is tiny....click on and enlarge it if  you really want to see it, I guess.)

 

We also drove through beautiful country and went to

Bath

 

We were too late to see the baths, but had a lovely dinner in Bath.

Then we checked out the Pulteney Bridge over the River Avon, built in the 1770s.

 

 

The rest of their time here we spent in

London...

our new home town!

 

Where they finally got to experience the Tube, Double Decker Buses,

and the Thames River Cruise.

 

 

We ran like crazy, seeing things like
 Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio,
Tower of London, Westminster Abbey,
St Paul's Cathedral (yes, Joel and Rick climbed the 525 stairs),
a couple of places from TV shows Joel loves, and of course,
Hampton Court.

Apparently I quit hauling my purse and ipad around, because suddenly
there are no pictures except these gardens.
Which I think were at Hampton Court.

And of course, we also had GREAT seats for
Phantom of the Opera,
and front row seats for
Wicked.

What a fun time having them here!

Sunday

On Sunday Rick and I were assigned to speak at the Stratford Ward, so of course we
dragged them there to hear us speak about the importance of General Conference...
where I may have given a very long, drawn out description of our tradition
of Butterscotch Butterballs for breakfast on General Conference Sunday.
Yum.

Then dragged them back to the Hyde Park Chapel to attend Sacrament Meeting in
the Britannia YSA Ward...

Then let them find their way back to our flat by themselves on the bus while we finished
attending the other meetings.  We've been gone so much, it felt very important to be there.
They got to meet a number of our "kids", which was nice.

We really do have a life here.

So,
to any of our children seeing this...
COME!
We love having you experience a taste of our life in London!