I’m gonna just cut right to the case ... we took our girls to London yesterday. It was a day trip, waking up at 4:30 a.m. to catch a 7:00 a.m. flight returning at 11:00 p.m. last night. We kept it a surprise and sprung it on them once we arrived at the airport. Keeping it a surprise was no small undertaking. They asked questions, peeked into my purse (no names, PARKER!), and harassed friends – but to no avail!

Many years ago we decided to quit giving gifts to the girls. The grounds for this was for no spiritual conviction … we are just plain cheap! Not really, but kinda! We’ve been blessed w/wonderful and giving relatives, namely grandparents, who generously give to our girls. Because of limited resources, we were giving gifts that ended up in the bottom of the toy box or the give-a-way sack a year later. So, in a stroke of genius, one of the parents in this family (clear my throat to signal a hint that is was me) came up with the idea of giving “experiences” … and thus a tradition was birthed.

Every weekend in December, that’s exactly what we do – give experiences and the London trip was the kick-off for this season!

We did a hop-on-hop-off bus tour of London which took us to all the highlights there are to see in the old town. You name it, we saw it yesterday:

The London Eye,
Buckingham Palace,
Big Ben (Bus guide: “Can anyone tell me what time it is?” Chris: (looking at his watch) “12:10 pm, sir.” Bus guide: “Thanks.” (looking up at Big Ben). For those of you not up with your London trivia, Big Ben is the biggest clock like in … the world!
Westminster Abbey,
Tower Bridge,
Tower of London,
London Bridge (thank God it wasn’t falling),
Trafalgar Square,
St. Paul’s Cathedral,
Horse Guard’s Parade,

And a lot of other places … like the place Princess Dianna wed Prince Charles which also happens to also be the place that the old woman fed the pigeons in the film Mary Poppins. Speaking of pigeons, they carry over 90 diseases and so the city of London had to do something about the pigeon population at Trafalgar square. I don’t know what they did … (makes you wonder) but I didn’t see any pigeons in Trafalgar square yesterday. Hmmm … sounds shady to me.

Anyway, yesterday was an awesome day. One that will go down in the memory books of our heads and hearts. It was the stuff that memories are made of … one that I won’t soon forget.

P.S. If you are a praying to Jesus person, the reason we went to London was for VISA purposes. You may ask privately what that is all about … but suffice it to say we’d appreciate your prayers for a VISA miracle in January.