Family, friends, weddings, rain and the olympics

Hi everyone,

This is the third 2012 blog. This one is about our trip to UK from end of June to the beginning of August. We went to 2 weddings, saw the Olympics and saw lots of friends and family. It was definitely my favourite trip yet, despite a quite staggering amount of rain!

We flew into Heathrow in the morning of the 29th June, met Bob and Sue, had a wonderful well missed greasy spoon breakfast with proper tea and then to the park and played in the freezing rain. The we drive down to Exeter ready for Ben and Teren's wedding the next day. It was a beautiful, gloriously happy wedding and we met loads of Tom's friends from University that we had not seen for ages. We were still pretty jet lagged which luckily worked in our favour. The boys were still dancing the night away at 2 in the morning.

Next, we drove to Stroud, Tom flew back to New York and the boys and I spent a relaxing few days with Tom's Mum, Margaret. Then, the boys and I drove up to Lower Wallop farm, Shropshire where my sister Mandy lives with her partner and children. Sam and Ben were so so so excited to see each other and were inseparable pretty much the whole time we were in Wallop as well as getting up to all kinds of mischief together. Sam went to Ben's school for a week which he enjoyed. It must have been such a different experience for him compared to his school in Lower Manhattan.

It rained every day at least once while we were there. It made the farm look so green, luscious and beautiful. The leaves on the trees glistened and twinkled. My boys love mud, rain, rural pusuits and playing with their cousins. It was great for me to spend so much time with my sister. We had a brilliant time. They loved the cows, climbing trees, collecting sticks and stones, eating grains, playing with the dog, playing in castles, playing on the trampoline... Sam went pony riding for the first time and Leo started walking! One dryish day we even went to the beach in Aberdovey and had a wonderful day. Also, my friends Olivia and Anna came to stay with us for a few days with was lovely. One weekend, my family all came up to Wallop for a lovely family barbequeue. It was wonderful to see everyone and I was very touched that people made so much effort to cook, put up gazebos and travel long distances so that we could all spend such a great time together.

We spent a few lovely days in Birmingham with Mum, Joe and Joanne, despite the rain! Mum is very resourceful in finding ways to entertain little boys whatever the weather. 

The first sunny day of our trip without any rain at all was the day before my brother James's wedding. Tom flew back from New York. It was a beautiful lovely fun wedding - all in Baggies colours! It was great getting to spend time with family, see relatives I hadn't seen for years and see my little brother get married to a wonderful woman. James and Claire had organised a bouncy castle that the kids played on for hours and hours!

Then we drove down to Stroud and the sun shone. We had a lovely few days going for walks, playing in the stream and generally enjoying ourselves. From Stroud, we drove down to Surrey, saw our Olympians zoom past us in the Olympic road race and spent some time with Emily and her family.

Finally, we drove down to Kent. We'd rented a house for a week big enough for people to stay with us and near to my brother's family. Tom's sister and Dad stayed with us for the whole week and various other friends came for a 1 or 2 nights in the week. I still felt that I got a chance to spend quite a bit of time with my brother's family. It was a fun week. One day, Rachel, Anna, Tom and I went up to Olympic Park to watch the 10m syncronised men's diving and women's water polo. It was really impressive and I felt very proud to be British. Another day a huge group of us took the little steam train to Dungeness. It felt a bit like we were puffing along to the end of the world. We met my brother's family when we got there. I love it there. The light is amazing and the wind reminds me that I'm alive! 

We had an amazing trip. It was wonderful getting a chance to spend so much time with people that we love.

Here are some of our photos of the trip.  Don't feel you need to look at them all - I got a bit carried away!