Canada 2012

Michigan Beach Days

Fun with DC cousins

The beginning of July my cousin Josh and his wife Krissy were in town for the All Star Game with their boys Will, John, and Preston.  They came over to swim at my parents pool one evening and the boys all got along great.  Poor Gillian was the lone girl!  We wish they lived closer so we could see them more often!

Blake loves Piper!

Trying to play ball.

New tricks in the pool.

Boys and rafts!

Pizza time!

Cool treats poolside!

The week with Grandma Robin and Tatiana

While we were in London James and Blake spent the week with Grandma Robin and Tatiana.  We are so thankful that they were able to come down for the week and stay with the boys.  As you can see from the pictures they had a really fun week!  I don't think they missed us too much because they were so busy having fun!

London and Wimbledon

In June Todd and I had an amazing opportunity to travel with my former college tennis coach and some former Cornell tennis players to Wimbledon.  We had an amazing trip and now that we are home it seems so surreal that it actually happened.  We were supposed to leave on Friday and arrive in London on Saturday morning to meet up with the group.  We got a call at 10 am informing us that our 5pm flight out of KC was cancelled.  I spent an hour on the phone with United and found out we could fly out at 2pm if we could get to the airport on time.  So we rushed around, finished packing and made it to the airport in time.  We waited over 3 hours for that flight to be cancelled as well.  At this point we couldn't find a flight to get us to London by Saturday morning so we went back home.  We got up early Saturday morning for a flight to Chicago and ended up flying to London at 6pm(after a 6 hour layover).  We were just excited to finally arrive!!!

 We tried to meet up with the rest of the group, but could never connect with them.  We toured the Tower bridge on our own before heading back to rest at the hotel.

 Another view of Tower bridge.

 We stayed at the St Pancras hotel the first 2 nights.  It was one of the nicest places we've ever stayed.

 Monday morning we took a private tour surrounding the Olympic grounds.  We weren't actually allowed inside, but it was interesting to hear about the construction and details of the Olympics.

 Monday afternoon we went to the London Eye.

 We got some awesome views of London during our 30 minute trip!

 Todd's beautiful photography!

 Tuesday morning we toured the area around Big Ben and visited Westminster Abbey.

A view of Westminster Abbey

Todd and I did a lot of walking in the afternoon.  We went by Buckingham Palace.

 Then we headed to a cool part of the city that I had read about on a blog before we left called Neal's Yard.  We enjoyed lunch on a patio and then massages at a "walk in" massage business.

 Wednesday and Thursday were spent at Wimbledon.  Wednesday we had centre court and court #1 tickets.  It was an unbelievable day!  First we enjoyed a nice buffet courtesy of the Wimbledon experience.  Then we headed into the matches.

 On court #1

 Watching Federer on Centre Court.

 Sharapova on Court #1

 Thursday morning we queued for tickets.  We got to the line a little after 6am.  Even though we had to wait nearly 4 hours it was still a fun experience and we landed awesome court 2 seats on the baseline.

This is a view from our seats watching Roddick play!

Friday was our last day.  Todd went back for more tennis at Wimbledon, while I stuck with most of the group and went to Kensington Palace, a tea house, gardens, and shopping at Harrods.  We spent the end of our night at a pub watching Federer play.  We had an amazing trip and we are forever thankful to Fred for planning such a spectacular trip!