London

I've been meaning to do this post for a while to document the difference between what we were used to in America and what we have here in England. Everything here is tiny!

 These are the biggest containers of flour and rice that I could buy at the grocery store. It seems that everything is like this - you just buy what will last you a week or so (for our family) and buy it again next week. It will be very weird to wander the ginormous aisles of Costco again!

The eggs here aren't white - they're all this brown color and often times there were feathers stuck to them! They also don't refrigerate the eggs here. 

My teeny tiny cookie sheet. I can fit like 6 cookies on it...making cookies takes for.ev.er! It was the biggest I could find!

The food is really fresh here and for the most part doesn't have any preservatives or extra food colorings. I think it will be weird to see the unnatural brightly colored candies like Starbursts again in the States. The Coke here also doesn't have corn syrup like it does in the States and I think it tastes better. Another thing I'm really going to miss is that organic items aren't that much more expensive than the regular ones.

One thing that I will really miss is the online grocery ordering!

 Here are some examples of the website I use. I just type in to search for what I want and it comes up and items I've ordered in the past are starred. Then the next day a nice delivery man shows up at my door to bring it all into my kitchen for me. And they don't tip (for the most part) here. It's great! I am really dreading dragging 3 squawking, begging, fighting children through the grocery store.

There are so many things that I will miss about living here like:

-not having to worry about driving in traffic

-great parks

-amazingly beautiful weather (for the most part)

-greenness of everything

-living on the river and being able to take beautiful morning walks

-forced exercise when I want to go anywhere

And some things that I am really excited for in the States like:

-my washer and dryer

-strapping my kids in the car and not having to remind them again to not swing around the poles in the tube

-Target (one stop shopping!)

-kitchen supplies (VitaMix, KitchenAid, etc...even a decently sized baking sheet!)
-Mexican food! It is terrible here. I am so excited!!

I'm sure that there are lots of other things, but those things stick out in my head. Just a few days left here!

June Re-cap

Mostly, this month has been devoted to scouring home listings in search of the perfect (enough) home for us to buy so we will have somewhere to live when we move back to the States. Despite Rob's and my obsession with house hunting, we've done some other fun things this month.

 Love this kid. He is into everything and always "helping"!

 What in the world do babies see in toilet bowl brushes! Blergh!

 

 The girls created this trap for any robbers that might try to come into their room. Love those creative girls!

 Grace just wouldn't take no for an answer when I told her that 3 big kids in one little tub was too many. She's a great little helper!

 Elevator selfie at Richmond Station. I'll miss packing ourselves into that elevator!

 All three kids had a tantrum at once...it was kinda funny but not at the same time.

 My phone app, RedFin, that I am obsessed with checking if there are new houses on.

 Rob and I went to see the Mousetrap, a play by Agatha Christie in town earlier this month. It is the longest consecutively running show.

Cute Rue wanted me to take a picture of the lace on her dress

Puddle jumping

We love the park! We never used to go in the States, but now we go a lot. It helps having it only be a 5 min walk away!

Ruby told me that she wants to be a Mommy when she grows up. Good choice, baby girl!

Benji has decided that he is a big boy and not a baby anymore. No more high chair or sippy cups for him! I can't believe that when I set the table now, I need to set 5 settings!

He eats all by himself! :)

We had a friend, Chantal, from Frisco come to London as part of her brother's band tour so we met up at Victoria Embankment for a lovely afternoon concert in the sunshine. The girls especially loved dancing to the jazz music.

On our way home from church on Sunday, a bee landed on one of the flowers on Ruby's dress and tried without luck to get some pollen from it :)

The most exciting news for all of June is that our offer was accepted and we are under contract to buy a beautiful home in Frisco!

It's in Plantation Resort with a front garage, large yard, and walking distance to the elementary school...pretty much everything we wanted! We are so happy to have the stress of house hunting and offering done with!

To finish June off, Rob took Monday off from work so we could go to Wimbledon to see some of the tournament.

 I'm so immature, but I've always wanted to take the Tooting bus to Wimbledon :) Thankfully it didn't smell as bad as it's name would imply.

 It's one of the only huge professional tournament things that you can get tickets for the day-of. They have a really slick system for getting the thousands of people through the queue. Upon arrival you receive a queue card with your queue number on it as well as a pamphlet "Guide to Queueing"

 Basically, you get in the queue and sit down and have a picnic until they tell you to move, which is not very often. It was fun for the kids to play and picnic with the Petts while we waited. Sadly, they were melting down while we still had a long time to wait plus we needed to get some documents going for the house, so we decided to leave the queue and not enter the tournament, but it was still really fun to feel the buzz and excitement that was all around!

 There were trucks collecting garbage and trains running nearby the whole time and every time Benji saw one he would get so excited and point and yell. It was really cute!

We did head up into the town of Wimbledon, which was so funny all decked out in tennis ball everything. We stopped at Cath Kidston (again...I was on a mission, okay?) to find Ben a train backpack that was on sale that I hadn't been able to find anywhere else. We found it! He was thrilled and had worn it pretty much since.

 He even slept with it on that first night!

Brighton

For our last day trip outside of London, we headed down to Brighton beach.We put an offer on a house on Friday night and while Brighton was really fun, our minds were a bit elsewhere and really what I needed was a quiet Saturday afternoon nap :)

 This amazing building is an old Indian army hospital

 The best picture we could get of the girlies and I, they were not in a super cooperative mood.

 Brighton had a cool Cath Kidston...one of my favorite stores :)

The kids were totally stoked about being at the beach and ran right down to the water. Ben thought it was cool until he put his tender little toes into the cold rushing water, then came back up to snuggle his Mama. There is no sand in Brighton, just these rather large pebbles. You pretty much needed to keep your shoes on, but it was fun all the same!

 

 The kids each got to choose one ride to go on. Ruby chose the carousel and Ben, of course, chose the train.

Grace waited until we got to the very end of the pier to choose a rather rickety log ride.

Another fun and exhausting Saturday!