Naomi & Jerry's Reception

Go Tay!

Odin caught a spider (he kept it with him all day :)

Sisters!

Grandma Gibson and Mom

Naomi & Jerry

Daddy

Ethan

Ethan touching baby cousin

Dan, Anna, & Sam

Look at Ashley in that hot hat

Yankee Meadows

We used our tent (thanks Siri & Chris)!  We got to hang out with Drew and Chrissy and their super cute kids, Ethan and Rebecca, as well as Dan and Ashley and their little Lucy.  It was so good to be with family.  Ethan and Lucy were so excited to be outdoors that they were running around and exploring everything.  I got some good advice and ideas from Chrissy and Ashley for my adventures ahead of being a new mommy; which have already come in handy. We definitely want to go camping again soon.

Dan and Drew changing diapers :)

We're having a Girl!!

It was so awesome to watch as the ultrasound image came up on the screen at the doctor's office.  We saw our little one moving around for the first time.  She had her feet up over her head, folded over like a taco, during most of the ultrasound.  Yay!  A little girl is just what we wanted.  They said everything looks good and her development is right on track.

Levi

Levi is a super cute lady from the Philippines. The first time I walked into choir she turned around and waved energetically. She the beckoned me to sit by her. She never married and so never had children of her own so she makes everyone in the ward her children and grandchildren :)

Best Hubby!

So, I woke up last night with a gnarly cramp in my leg. I must have cried out pretty loud; Taylor immediately sat up and started frantically saying, "What happened? What happened? What can I do? What can I do?."  I had to calm him a little and tell him it was just a charlie-horse. I shook my leg, no good. I then stood up and walked around for a minute; it went away.  I lay back down and it felt like it was going to come back, but it didn't.  Taylor was still a little panicked :). I think I have picked the best one!! I can only imagine what he will be like when I start having intense contractions...

Westminster

Windblown hair...

Tay and I took one more trip to Westminster, where Big Ben, The Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abby are.  There is just something about Big Ben... I really like it! It seems so mysterious and elegant. It felt great to be walking around in the cool, windy evening.

Kumon

I volunteered at a after school program called Kumon. It's a world-wide program that encourages children (or adults) to learn independently.  They come to the center to have a quite place to work as well as turn in and pick up their work. Lupita runs this center I worked at in London.  She monitors the children's work coming in and moves them forward in the program.

I worked at the oral reading counter where children would come take oral tests with me.  I would time them and give them feedback. They would also come read books out loud to me and I would score them for Lupita to see.  I would also correct their work and record it.

Sarah

I worked with some refugees from Somalia. It was so sad to hear Niema's story about how her parents and four brothers were killed in the tribal wars. She came to London a year ago to escape the terror. She said that she'd be at the markets getting food and someone would throw a bomb in the middle of the market...:(  It's a whole other world there. She has a great attitude!! I would have never guessed all that she's been through. She's so fun and playful.

Niema and me

Tour of Western England

Do we look like tourists or what?! We took a tour through a company called Students Tours this weekend to Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral and the city of Bath. It was a great experience to see so much in one day.

Stonehenge is set in beautiful fields just eight miles north of Salisbury. There are many explanations about why it is there and how it was built. This version (it has been built multiple times throughout the centuries) is 5000 years old! Each month the sun shines through a different set of stones, so it's like a big calender. The stones were not as tall as I imagined them to be.




This is Salisbury Cathedral which is 800 years old. If you look at the bottom of the pic you can see our tour guide, he's holding up a red paper to gather the group to him.

Great picture, I know!

The inner courtyard

This cathedral was beautiful. It was constructed in the Gothic art period which our tour guide said we could tell by the pointed archways and the flying buttresses (what are flying buttresses anyway???).

One of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta is housed there. We got to see it, written in Latin on vellum (pig skin...). Great story behind it (check wikipedia for more information if you so desire). The Declaration of Independence was inspired by it.




Here is the town that was built around the cathedral. The story is that a little over 800 years ago there was a division among the people that lived in Salisbury. Apparently the military and the English Church were not getting along. The priest of the church got sick of it and said he was going to shoot an arrow in the air and wherever it landed he was going to build a new cathedral and build a city around it for his followers. The Salisbury Cathedral went up in 30 years. There is always construction going on because it is made of limestone and gets the breeze from the sea nearby.



This is Bath. It looks exactly what I imagined it to look like: water everywhere and antique :).
We walked to along the markets enlivened by the live musicians ( it's so great! They're everywhere here in England serenading our trips...). We walked to the Jane Austin center, who lived in Bath long ago. We didn't go in, but the ancient Roman Baths are there, which they used when they occupied part of England.