London revisited :c)

I know...

I've fallen off the blogging track again.

 We've had an exciting October and were thrilled that Greg managed to get the week off to be able to spend time with family in London.

Here Levi is eagerly awaiting Grandpa and Bebe's arrival from the US.

Finally...on the Underground. We literally drove for about 2 hours trying to find a car park with available spaces to be able to leave our car for the week and get into London. We even stopped at Ikea to have lunch just to give ourselves a break from all the driving.

Here are Levi and Greg walking down the street after a delicious breakfast of cornish pastries

This photo was a few days into our trip...I know you can't see Levi, but he's under there. His head is on the left side and you might be able to make out the dents where his legs are towards the middle right. It was hilarious because he pulled the covers over his head and was talking then the next thing you know he was fast asleep. I think we wore him out :c)

The Tower Bridge at night...we took pictures while waiting for the Ceremony of the Keys to take place at the Tower of London.

Nothing like a family hug. Levi loves hugs and how can you not oblige with a face like that.

On the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral. I think the look on Levi's face is one I've seen in photos of my brothers when they were getting into mischief....I'm sure he's learned that face from his daddy too :c)

Another photo of "the exhaustion of Levi"

Levi really enjoys riding on the buses..."double bus" or "decker bus" haven't quite gotten down the "double decker bus" unless we say it slowly and he repeats us. The best seat is on the top in the front. :c) We managed to see quite a bit of London this way. He even got to see all the taxis and could identify them by the end of the week. We'll have to find a London taxi for him the next time we're in London. We had bought him the double decker bus and didn't even think to get the taxi.

I also think it's funny that he knows the "train" is down stairs....as in the Underground. 

Levi being chased by Grandpa...a scene we often see.

Going to see the Changing of the Guard and the Changing of the Horse Guard.

I just liked this photo....our little family :c)

Changing of the Horse Guard

Okay, not the most flattering photo by any stretch of the imagination, but....doesn't it look like Levi has his own little chair on my stomach :c) His little brother may not appreciate it if he sits on him when he's born...who knows he might be sitting on Levi soon enough :c)

The Tower of London Yeoman Warder....we actually visited the Tower during the day as well. It was amazing to see the Crown Jewels...absolutely beautiful and stunning pieces.

Tower Bridge during the day.

The London Eye....hilarious how excited Levi was about the London eye this time around. He kept saying "see Wondon Eye, see Wondon Eye".......Too cute.

Levi and Greg playing on the way to the Churchill war rooms.

We had such a great time and were so thankful to have family come and visit. Now we just need someone to book their tickets for November :c) Thanksgiving in England anyone, anyone ? :c)

We are around the 32 week mark and are getting excited that our new little one will be here in the next 2 months. At some point the reality of it all will hit us. :c)

Is there anything sweeter?

 I'm not sure there is anything sweeter than your two year old climbing into your bed and giving you hugs the kind where his little arms are wrapped around your neck and then he starts giving you kisses all over your face. That was how my morning started...granted it was about 630am, but I thought I could overlook that for all the affection that was being handed out.

We had dinner last night with some dear friends and they had recently been to Germany and picked up this shirt for the soon to be newest Dunn family member. We thought it was great and I just had to laugh knowing that Oma and Opa will love it too.

Translation: "When Mom and Dad say 'No' I ask Grandma and Grandpa"

Here's Levi playing with play dough. We made an alligator and he decided he would let the alligator "chomp, chomp" his finger.

Who knows...we may have a Florida Gator fan on our hands. We'll take an SEC fan and work on getting a little bit more orange and white in his wardrobe :c)

Don't yawn without putting your hand in front of your mouth...

...that's right. Don't yawn without putting your hand in front of your mouth because it's bad manners and you're sure to have a two year old trying to grab your tongue out of your mouth. Greg found this out the hard way tonight when he yawned and Levi decided he could grab his tongue and wrestle him to see his teeth, too. :c)

Other than that we had a pretty laid back weekend. Greg was on call and so we stayed in town for once and just relaxed a bit.

Krispy Kreme

I can't remember if we mentioned our Krispy Kreme dilemma to anyone. Well the long and the short of the story are that they're $1.50 for one original glazed and a little bit more for the fancier ones. Also, they're only available on base two days out of the week. We saw a box of about 9 assorted Krispy Kreme doughnuts sitting on the counter at the place on base where you can purchase them and out of curiosity asked the man how much they would cost. He simply replied, "about $15.00"....we almost fell over and thought "In the US that would cost us about $3.00 or so. Needless to say we saw our Krispy Kreme futures looking bleak. Well from one set of Krispy Kreme lovers to another here was a gift to us that we wanted to share with all of you. Partly, so that you could think of us the next time you indulge in a Krispy Kreme doughnut that cost you less than a dollar :c)

Our box of assorted deliciousness :c)

....2 for me, one for Greg and one for Levi...do the math people :c)

I love this photo it says to me..."WOW, look it's a doughnut how special am I"

I told Levi to say thank you and this is what I got

He loved every bite of it :c)  and so did we.

Thanks again for the Krispy Kremes :c)

Nothing a mommy or daddy kiss can't fix.

Monday night was a rough night at the Dunn household. Little Levi woke up at midnight crying. Upon my initial assessment and questioning I couldn't find out what was wrong and so thought he had just woken up with a nightmare and needed to fall back asleep. So I headed back for bed, but the crying continued. I went back in and heard "mommy pee pee toilet" and then "mommy, ea- mommy, ea-" and when I took him to the bathroom where of course we have the street lights shining in and he's sitting on the toilet he started pointing to his ear saying "mommy, ea-" So I decided it must be his ear that hurt. When I asked him does your ear hurt he said "mommy, kiss, ea-" Well if that didn't tell us his ear hurt I don't know what would. He slept restlessly the rest of the night in our bed. I took him to the earliest appointment and sure enough his one ear drum had perforated and the other one was filling up and looking infected too. So we'll start some antibiotics for the next 10 days. Our poor little man. Well and while there we decided might as well get the flu mist and pneumonia vaccine oh and they decided they could give me my flu shot too. Needless to say, Levi was not impressed that we both got a Snoopy bandaid, but we managed. In the less than 10 minutes it took to leave the peds office and go get our prescription the little man had fallen asleep in my arms. Such a rough spell. I will say however, I did enjoy the snuggling time it bought me :c)

But it just goes to show "a mommy or daddy kiss can heal any pain".

Amazed

Have you ever just been amazed at your child? Well there I was sitting working on something and next thing I know Levi walks in and says "helicopter" as he holds up this Duplo creation of his. I'll let you look at the pictures and decide for yourself. I thought "wow, that's pretty impressive" You just can't put anything by these little guys.

It was a little more challenging to get him to take a photo so that people could see his creation so here's my hand holding it for the photo.

I know one probably should realize how intelligent our little ones are, yet they still seem to catch us off guard.

London

We had a wonderful time in London...I mean truly wonderful. We actually just went and relaxed...yes I know, "the Dunn's take things slowly." We did in fact let Levi do a lot of walking on this trip which just goes to show how laid back we were :c)

We started Saturday morning off by visiting the London Eye ( a huge ferris wheel...for lack of a better description...it's 443 ft tall). We were so glad to have our Merlin Annual Passes as we avoided waiting in line and just hopped right on with about 3 other couples...which made for a nice empty capsule and great viewing. So here are so photos of that.

Levi liked watching the trains coming and going.

Always taking it in.

This was when we were on top...the capsule next to us.

The two guys taking a closer look at things.

Levi telling Greg about the trains and boats that he can see.

Big Ben and Palace of Westminister

So embarrassing, all these photos.

Dunn Family on the London Eye

We were on our descent and this was the capsule above us.

Levi pointing to all the wonderful things he can see from the London Eye

After the London Eye, we headed to the Sea Life Aquarium which was literally next door. Again, the Merlin Passes came in handy as we just walked right in and got to see all the fish, sharks, turtles, alligators, etc that we could want. Levi thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the sea creatures. Of course, I made some comment about how I wondered if the shark brush their teeth and so now he keeps saying "Brush teeth, shark" which is adorable. Not to mention the fact that I never realized that sharks had rows of teeth stacked on top of each other...needless to say I've become even more weary of them and now know how they can rip off a limb without a second thought.

The crocodiles (or alligators as we will call them for our Gator purposes) caught Levi's attention and he could see them swimming under the water and sitting above which was great. We even practiced our "gator chomp" while we were there...Grandpa will be so proud.

We headed towards Westminister Abbey and looked at the outside...impressive as always with the churches here.

After that we decided to head on to Madame Tussaud's which was also "free" courtesy of our Merlin Passes. It was nice to go and not feel like we needed to stand and get our picture with all the wax sculptures as we can go back and take them at any time. We grabbed a few photos that we didn't have to stand in line for :c) And yes, Levi eventually gave up...thus the wonderful "sleeping baby" photos :c)

Muhammad Ali

Nelson Mandela

Greg with Winston Churchill

Samuel L. Jackson

This last photo was in the "4D Superhero" part of the museum and there was a 4D film with glasses, etc. Well we took Levi and he thought it was interesting for about the first 4 minutes until of course (as we should have realized as parents) the villians came out and people started shooting and stuff started exploding. A little too "real" for a 2 year old. So he and I ushered ourselves out and waited for Greg.

All in all we had a great day and then spent Sunday walking around Hyde park. We will have to return to the Diana Memorial Fountain as they were doing some maintenance on it and so we didn't get to see it in all its glory. Levi did however enjoy all the "people running," "people swimming unda bidge" (people swimming under the bridge), "ducks", etc. We even saw some horses walking around.