Surprise...well kind of!

You know we couldn't get away with not saying something beforehand, but we only let it out of the bag that morning by saying Mom needed to be home at 6:30PM, leaving it wide open to interpretation. Besides sending the computer to computer ICU, all preparation and planning came together to celebrate Mom's big day!

The decorations...




The buffet tried to encorporate some of Mom's favorite things...

Sonic Ice, Diet Coke and Cafe Rio all around...


And Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake...

Let the party begin!!

Happy Birthday to you...

We...
Love...







You...



PS. Kristen we were sad you weren't there, but Mom knows you are having a tea party for her when she sees you in a week or so, so its okay :)

an old gem...

just looking through some old pictures and came across this one from fao schwartz, new york 2005. you look like a natural kar. except im hoping baby girl will be a little cuter...

i am a certified blogging failure

i dont know why i havent been updating, the internet has been really bad so i will blame that. well today is our 3 more week mark! crazy how fast time has gone by. i am sad that there is only 3 more weeks but at the same time i am very excited to come home! first and foremost to see you guys, and second to have my closet back. i almost torched mine this morning, i am so sick of everything in it! and it was raining today. i never thought i would get sick of the rain, but seriously?? it needs to stop. i dont even remember the last thing i blogged about, so i will just throw some random pictures in here.

most importantly... i have now been inside of BUCKINGHAM PALACE!! the tour was so cool and i felt so special being on the inside of the gate. they took us around to all the amazing state rooms. we saw about 19 rooms including the ballroom and dining room. unfortunately we did not get to see the queens private bedroom, but we did see the secret door that leads to it. we learned some cool facts like... the queens gold carriage is worth 40 million pounds! and it weighs 5 tons. and the palace has a group of employees whos sole job is to change all the clocks for daylight savings. there are over 1000 clocks in the palace and it takes them 24 hours! crazy huh. no pictures were allowed inside the palace, but they gave us a souviner guide. here i am after the tour...

these pictures were from a couple weeks ago, but i just got them from someone elses camera. they are from regents park, which is so beautiful right now! we tried to go to the zoo but it started raining and we didnt have a ton of time. but the park was gorgeous and we had fun walking through it!

here are some pictures from when we climbed st pauls. it is definitely one of my favorite places here. it is so gorgeous and we were just baffled at how the built that place. and the paintings on the dome! crazy. and dont mind my hair, it was a little windy...

this past monday was michelles birthday. she turned 21 and we had to do something extra special to celebrate because she was not looking forward to her birthday. so where did we go?? you guessed it! harrods!! this is us with our 'bacio' dessert. it is chocolate, vanilla, and hazlenut.and here are a couple pictures from our last trip. im not going to go through what we did, because it was a lot. but it was a really fun trip with a lot of hiking and beautiful scenery!! seriously this picture is untouched, thats how pretty it was!this is me and my roommates on the cliff. i really got so lucky with my roommates here. we are such great friends and have so much fun together.

and here we are with mike, im sure there are some disadvantages to being the only boy here but there are some upsides too!

and here is one last picture that kendra snapped of me. pretty much my life here! its scary how much i remind myself of dad...

well i love you all so much! sorry for the really long post, hope you liked it. only one month til i am home! i started shopping for souvenirs so if anyone has any requests let me know!!

Visiting our British Relative.....

Yup, that is Kristen in the flesh! She is still as beautiful as ever and a most delightful tour guide as well. This was us in front of Westminster Abbey (amazing!) after a long day of travel. Kris was so nice to take us to all of the big tourist stops this day, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, National Gallery, and the River Thames.
The next day was more tourist stops, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, the British Library, and tasting some delicious fish and chips. This is me as a solo tourist in front of one of my favorite sites, Tower Bridge. I don't know why but that thing is pretty dang cool.
This is from the "field trip" into the country side. Warwick was a little cheesy but the grounds were awesome and this picture over looking the River Avon is pretty cool. We also went to Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, and the Cotswolds.
Back to London. I was VERY happy to see Kristen again. I am sure that she wasn't too excited about going out with me that night, but did a great job of it anyway. Not only was she great at taking me to see the sights, she was particularly good at taking me to enjoy the tastes! I had no idea how yummy all of the sweet treats would be (lets just say I was pleasantly surprised!!!) The first picture needs no explanation, for none could do this luscious orange cake justice. The second is a most tasty crepe from the Portobello market, and the third was the delicious peppermint tea from the Orangery at Kennsington Palace.










Despite a few hang ups along the way, this trip was great! It was so good to see you Kris! You are an amazing girl and thank you so much for taking me around. Thanks to all those at home who put up with odd hours to help me out as well....I appreciate all your help!

Happy Easter!

What would Easter be without Mom's latest cooking masterpiece! The peeps cake! Isn't it beautiful, it tasted as good as it looks!
Not that exciting but here is a latest belly picture of me. We just had our checkup on Friday and things are going good. I just started into my 8th month! Yay, over 3/4 done, and a good thing because clothes aren't fitting and they are hard to find! I start going to the Doctor every 2 weeks now, which I think will make time fly, but you never know.

We also celebrated a few birthdays. Lots of birthdays this month!

This is me getting some sweet air at the "Dangerous Dunes" in the rzr.



posted from iPhoneSlide.com

oi, to the west country!

in case some of you didnt know, london experienced a hurricane last week. not so much london as england, especially the west coast. well it was really bad luck because that was supposed to be our trip for the weekend. but instead they decided to split our trip into two, placing the other one right smack in the middle of the time that lindsey is here. i guess thats beside the point though... so for our trip last week they changed it to just friday and saturday. we woke up on friday and hopped on the bus. we crusied for a couple hours before stopping in bath. we didnt have a ton of time there but we got to see a lot of the really fun stuff, especially the roman baths! i wish i had one of those in our backyard. kendra and i tried to jump in, but we got stopped. we checked that out for a little bit before trying the magical mineral water (which was disgusting). we walked around the city a little bit before getting back on the bus to go to dartmoor. dartmoor is one of englands equivalents to a national park. it is this really high land that is covered in rocks and is almost completely treeless. we stopped and hiked around there for a little bit. it was a gorgeous view and very wild, as in lots of room to run around and wild ponies hanging out in the parking lot. after playing there for a little bit we went to a little town called witticom-in-the-moor. im still not sure why. so we just hung out in a cemetery until it was time to go to exeter, which is where we spent in the night. our hostel was pretty nice, it looked kind of like a cabin (we felt like we were at girls camp, not that i would know because i hardly ever went to girls camp). but i taught everyone how to french braid, they seem to think its a talent. here is my masterpiece in kendras hair. the next morning we got back on the bus and went to stourhead. it is an amazing garden that was part of a manor house for a while. it is also where they filmed pride and prejudice. even though it was raining it was so pretty and i would love to go back in the summer some time. they had grottos and temples that were so amazing. we are also really excited to see our photographer, we had forgotten that we arranged for a family photo to be taken there. it turned out really well. we had a lot of fun there and grabbed lunch at a little market they had. we got some bread and honey and a brownie. it was delicious. we once again climbed back on the bus and headed to stonehenge. it is... some rocks. and it was... raining. but we made it fun. it is really interesting how no one knows how they got there, but it is definitely not a place where you would want to spend a lot of time. after that we headed to salisbury to see the salisbury cathedral. it is the largest spire in england, at 404 feet. it was really impressive. i didnt get any good pictures though so im not going to post any. they also had a copy of the magna carta there from 1215. then it was finally time to head back to the centre. we packed a lot in in just 2 days, but it ended up being a lot of fun! sheesh, that was a long blog and it took forever to do. nap time.

westminster abbey

this week they gave us money to go check out westminster abbey. i hadnt been inside yet so i was super excited! i am so happy that i decided to take history over here because i have learned so much and it is so exciting to go places and see graves of people and actually know who they are. i was really excited to see elizabeth I and mary known that i underdstand their history and everything. i was also really excited to happen upon richard I, aka longshanks, aka king who killed braveheart, aka our relative. i must say though, i am really embarrassed to be related to him, he was a loser. but the inside was so gorgeous, as was the outside! no pictures allowed on the inside though, but the sky looked amazing outside and i thought these pictures turned out pretty cool. this is one of those dorky photoshopped focal black and white pictures. but still kindof cool right?

the sky looked really amazing in these pictures.

yo yo cops cant stop us

for art class we were all assigned to make a "grafitti" poster. it could be whatever you wanted and say whatever you wanted it to. after we all looked at them joe had found a spot on brick lane where there were a bunch of posters hanging up and we were going to go hang them there. we took the tube and joe had to wait for a couple students so he sent the rest of us ahead. we get there and start hanging up our posters only to be confronted by the cops. ya, i guess vandalizing is illegal or something?? so we got a talking to and they told us we would have to get permission to hang posters up, or come back when they werent there. so everyone grabbed their posters and scattered and only one poster made it up on the wall. whos was it?? ill give you one guess...

who knows if its still there, but hey, i successfully vandalized the streets of london for at least 10 minutes.