Prickwillow England

We were excited to finally be in England with my brother and his wife, and surprisingly the kids did very well adjusting to the time change.  They pretty much instantly were on track, so that was wonderful for all of us.  We did a lot of fun things around their small town.

We took a walk with the dogs along this little river.  Watch out for the horse poop!!

We took a couple of trips to the Prickwillow village hall, which is one of the only places to go in their small town.  There's a small park & playground there, which the kids loved because it had a small zipline which we don't really have in the states.

It was pretty exciting when Connor lost his first tooth while we were visiting!  He actually lost one more later on in the trip.

While taking a walk Connor said that this was his dream house.  Aaron also did something peculiar.  He picked up a stick and said he was smoking.  I'm not really sure if he had seen more people smoking over there, or what the deal was, but that was the first time he had done something like that!

I had brought a lot of toys with me to keep the kids busy, and one day Aaron decided to throw this sticky ball against the windows like I had shown him.  He missed this time and see if you can find it on the ceiling.

We actually did hang our clothes to dry outside for the first time in my life.  It actually worked better than I had imagined.  Just had to make sure to get them off the line before the tiny little spiders started to put webs on the clothes.

Hanging out was fun!

Here's those tiny little spiders:

Back to Prickwillow Hall with the dogs!

Max was so good unless he saw another dog.  Then he really wanted to say hello!

This was Maya's favorite ride, but she did end up biting her tounge pretty good on it.  Thankfully it was a good lesson for Courtney and Thomas that the head injuries/mouth injuries look worse most times than they really are, and they bleed a lot.  Just staying calm helps!!

Going over the ocean!

Surprisingly flying over the ocean was not as terrible as I thought it was going to be.  The number 1 factor was that I kept Maya on the pacifier, which helped her calm down on the airplane and probably helped her ears as well.  I was a little worried about flying Aer Lingus since it was so inexpensive, but even Brian was impressed with the legroom and the on board entertainment situation.  Not to mention our lovely conversations with the flight attendants.  They were so confused why we would want to leave Las Vegas to see Ireland.  Especially since our layover was in Shannon.  They said there's nothing to see there but sheep!  We just had a short layover in Shannon to get to London.

We made it over without too much trouble, and landed at a small airport in Shannon, Ireland.  We decided to get a little something to eat since we had a little time.  Over the course of the trip we would discover little things that were different and a lot of things they did better in other airports!  Like the trays on an automatic roller.  Awesome.  

We sat down and Brian got us some pastries, coffee, and the boys hot chocolate.  I noticed the couple next to us enjoying their morning Guiness.  Nothing like a dark beer in the morning!  

Aaron was lounging in the stroller pushed up to the table.  Connor was so overjoyed to see the hot chocolate he pushed one over to Aaron exclaiming, "HOT CHOCOLATE AARON!!!!" and as quick as he pushed it was as quick as it toppled over and spilled.  The hot chocolate had no safety lid so it ran all over the table and off the edge, right onto Aaron.  Then the immediate SCREAM and CRYING from Aaron in your first foreign country is not the experience you'd want to have.  Thankfully it wasn't too hot, but I had to get Aaron up, and unfortunately we didn't have our bags to get him a change of clothes.

He calmed down about 10 minutes later and was able to enjoy some of Connor's hot chocolate and some pastries.

We got onto our next flight and headed to our next destination...LONDON where we were excited to see my Brother and sister in law, who we had not seen in about a year.  We had been dreaming of visiting them, and I couldn't believe that we were actually doing it with all three kids.  It really was a dream come true.

The flight was short, and we landed in London as scheduled.  After getting our bags we headed to the nearest waiting area.  Tired after 12 hours of travelling with small children we were ready to get to Thomas and Courtney's house.  We didn't see them anywhere, and we didn't have their phone number, so I decided to pay for an internet computer to Facebook them.  Thankfully they responded right away.  

Courtney told me that there was a fatal accident involving large trucks on the freeway heading into London.  So after the long dayof traveling we were stuck in the London airport waiting for them to arrive.  It was terrible for them as well.  Courtney was about 6 months pregnant so stuck in traffic is the last thing you want to be.

Brian ended up getting some cash since he was itching to exchange it, but it turns out he got ripped off pretty good in the airport.  The fees were super high, and he should have waited.  Most people took our VISA card anyway, but you live and learn!!

So I think we waited about 2 hours for them to finally arrive, and that was a sweet moment.  All of our tiredness seemed to float away.  Courtney took the kids and I back to Prickwillow in her car, which she had so nicely prepared with car seats and everything.  

Brian, Thomas and Connor went to go get our rental car.  They had quite the experience from what I've been told.  They had to wait about an hour in a very unorganized office.  So they ended up being quite a ways behind us.  At least Brian was happy with our car when we did get it:

Courtney took us strait to the commissary on base so that I could get the necessities for the kids.  Mainly I didn't want to travel with a bunch of diapers, so it was nice I could go buy things right away.  It was very similar to a US grocery store, and I even paid in US dollars.  We even stopped at Taco Bell for dinner on the way home.  It didn't have all the specials like they do in the United States, but it was still very much the same.  When we got to their home we were so happy to be there.  It was so nice that we were going to be able to spend over a week with them and it was even better that Thomas got a lot of days off to spend it with us!

European Adventure 2013 Begins

Our trip began on a Wednesday June 26th, 2013.  The way I decided to book the trip was to travel to New York first.  I figured this would help us in two ways.  The flights overseas were much less expensive than flying from Las Vegas, and I figured with small children this would give us a little "break" from the long flights we had ahead of us.

Our first flight was quite early, and we ended up getting to our hotel before we could actually check in.  We had left early in the morning, and we were all REALLY tired, but we decided to head to the Empire State Building to check it out while we waited.  It was walking distance from our hotel, which is one of the main reasons I booked it.  Connor was dreaming of seeing the Empire state building, and really wanted to go up it.  So everyone, including Brian, was a trooper and we started walking.  We stopped for a little sugar energy though!

Here we go!

Much needed ENERGY!!!

Connor was a little more excited than Aaron.

Aaron was more excited about the icees!!

Connor REALLY loved this model of the Empire State Building.

We got him a camera for the trip so that he could take his own pictures.

Not sure Maya was as excited about the trip either.

We made it to the TOP!!!!

Connor was so excited.

So after making it to the top of the Empire State building we headed back to our hotel.  We still had to wait another 45 minutes or so until our room was open, and with the time change we were getting really tired.  Finally it came time to get our room, and the front desk clerk gave us a big smile.  She said, I hope it's ok, but we have had a family room come open, and we'd love to upgrade you for free today!  We were all OVERJOYED!!!  We couldn't believe it.  New York hotel rooms I've stayed in were always very small, and this room was at least twice the size I've ever seen.  On top of it, there were BUNK BEDS!!!!  The kids were in heaven.

So we got into our room around 3pm or so, and we all were so tired we fell asleep.  Brian and I woke up around 8pm and we couldn't believe we slept so long.  We were thinking about walking to Times Square that evening.  We whispered to each other, and decided that we were tired enough to go back to sleep.  We all slept until the morning and felt GREAT!  I was so thankful that the kids slept the whole night.

The next day we planned on taking the kids to ground zero and to get some super good pizza at a place we had eaten at our last visit to New York before flying to London that evening.  As we are packing up I got a call from my sister that Brody, our dog had gotten out.  At that time it was too early to call the Animal Control, so I decided not to tell Brian yet.

As we were walking to 911 ground zero I got a call from the Animal Shelter that they had Brody.  That was a relief.  Brian was shocked when I told him, so I'm glad I didn't worry him at that point.  He was dealing with driving through New York and the humid heat.

We arrived at the memorial and it was incredible.

We couldn't park close to the pizza place so we just stopped at the first pizza place we could find.  Connor was so impressed he still tells everyone that the best pizza is in New York.

We headed to the airport where we were offered $500/ticket to stay one more night and fly out the next day.  Maybe we should have taken it, but at that point we thought it was a miracle we had made it that far, plus trying to coordinate it with Thomas and Courtney who were picking us up in London, we weren't sure if we could swing it.  Maybe we could have, but we will never know.