Baby Friends!

Whenever we meet up with friends from when the girls were tiny... we call them their baby friends. So when we were in the States over Christmas (yeah... still posting from December... just a little behind) we had a get together with some of our great friends from our married BYU ward. Thanks girls... it was a blast!

"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine."

~ Thomas Jefferson

Bitter Beer???

Tunnel Vision

So from Santa... Zack was given a tunnel! That's about it... gotta love the simplicity of children! All of the kids played in that thing forever. It's always good to know Santa is right on sometimes!

Girls' Christmas Nativities

One thing I love about the girls going to Church of England schools is they celebrate appropriately Christian holidays. (Actually... to be fair... I think the non-CofE schools do as well.)

So Makenna's nativity was super cute... all the little 4 year olds trying to have the attention span for a 30-minute show... waiting for their little part. Some of the children even sang solos. Makenna was one of the angels. This is a video of one of the songs... it doesn't sound great... but it's better than the others. Makenna is just behind Joseph... a little to the right.

This is a video of one of the songs... but at home... as it was difficult to hear at the show.

This is after the show... Makenna with her friends, Little Anna, Isabel and Elliott (or "Idiot")

Brooklyn's show was called, "The Christmas Jolly Postman." She played a horse and sang the songs with all the other children. The video of Brooklyn didn't turn out great because of the lighting but here's one of the main song.

If you look closely, Brooklyn is in the red shirt behind the girl with the tan shirt on.

Thanksgiving in London???

So it's kind of weird on major American holidays when you live in a different country and nobody even celebrates! The embassy sent out an email this month to remind the Americans about the Thanksgiving day service at St. Paul's Cathedral. Usually St. Paul's is like 10 pounds to get in... so we decided to kill two birds... It was a wonderful service. Very interesting to have English people speak about the freedom of America and why Americans should be grateful... but I guess it doesn't run so deep after 250 years. The ambassador spoke and the kids were bored out of their minds! I let them ditch school because I don't know any American kids that go to class on Thanksgiving! See if they ever want to ditch with me again! We took one picture inside then got in trouble as there was no photography allowed!

Then on December 1, we had all the Americans (and their non-American counterparts) from the ward over for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. It was a tight fit (22 in our 150 year old house) but it was super fun! We all have much to be thankful for... especially great friends, the Church, and yummy turkey... even in London!

These are the Pilgrims straight off the Mayflower :) All dressed up like fairies! Those pilgrims were weird!

Here's the lone Indian! (All the others ate their feathers)

And here are some people from the ward and the missionaries! Who is the pasty white one in front there?

Monkey See, Monkey Do!

Zack is our biggest immitator! He copies everything we do, which proves helpful at times... and not so helpful at others! He's always doing the laundry, unloading the dishwasher, taking out the recycling, putting away groceries... whatever we're doing, he's doing or whatever we're not doing but should be, he's doing!

Please Mr. Crocodile

This is the most-requested song from our American friends/family... my (Alex's) family even paid the girls to do it. It's not that exciting... so we added one of Makenna's little friends to add some authenticity.

Guy Fawkes Day

On November 5 each year, the British... or at least the English, celebrate a holiday... Guy Fawkes Day. So in 1605, a man... Mr. Fawkes attempted to overthrow the Protestant government of King James I by blowing up the Houses of Parliament and specifically... the King. He was caught in the cellar of Parliament, tortured and killed on November 5. The event is commemorated every year with fireworks and burning effigies of Guy Fawkes on a bonfire.
It's been said that some of the English wonder if they are celebrating Fawkes' execution or honoring the attempt to overthrow the government!

The kids playing in the park while they were prepping for the bonfire... you can see the wood pile/pile o' doors! Guess some of our neighbors are doing some remodeling!

These are pictures of the fireworks festivities... consisting of sparklers in the garden and a front row seat from the loft of the park's fireworks... nothing compared to the 4th of July, but it appeased the kids!

It's about time!

So I guess that could be taken in a couple of ways... like I don't have enough time to blog... or I've procrastinated long enough... my situation is the latter! I love reading the blogs of our friends and family members... especially since we're in London. Although the world has become smaller with technology (mostly Skype for us) we still feel very distanced from the people we love! Josh has a website that he posts pictures of... but typically doesn't write much. So hopefully I'll use this blog to help others keep track of our little family but mostly... like I said before... it's a sorry excuse for not writing in a journal!



The photos here are of the kids on our last trip. We returned from the Alps (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) last week. We thought it would be perfect... or brilliant... to go to that area while the autumn leaves were the most colorful... and the girls were out of school. Well the day before we arrived it was about 60 degrees... so although I checked the weather report, I didn't believe it would be as cold as they thought. I WAS WRONG! We froze our bums off. So the pictures are of how the girls feel about the cold... and Zack. The poor little guy hated it... he cried a ton and his nose was raw from all the wipings! Despite the cold and snow, we saw a lot of beautiful scenery... mostly from the car unfortunately! Our friends Ritchie and Melissa Blake met us in Zurich and we did some travels with them before they came home with us to London. So here's to the Barlows having a go at the blogging thing! "Have a go"... British for "trying, taking a turn" I got that one from the girls! :)