WE are in LONDON!!!

 Our good friends, Hank & Debbie Rogers and Tammie and Clifford Finch were talking about their trip to London and LaVerl & I just kind of invited ourselves along- so here we are!!! We flew to London on Monday, Sept 8th. I booked our flights through Priceline, so our departing flight had a stop at Chicago O'Hare Airport! I was not happy about that because we only had 55 minutes to make our connecting flight, also changing Airlines!! We were flying American, then transferring to British Airways! I was super stressed about it for days worrying. Then the night before our flight, sitting at J'net's house in Mesa, I get a phone call from British Airways asking if we would like a direct flight to London??  Would I?? It was an answer to my prayers and definitely a "tender mercy"!! We flew out later in the evening and arrived in London after a 9 hours overnight flight around 2:30. By the time we got our luggage and finally found out where our Uber driver was parked, we didn't get to our motel room until after 4pm. We were tired, not sleeping well on the plane at all!! Our friends met us downstairs and helped bring our heavy bags up 3 flights of stairs. There are no elevators in these really old motels. Our room is tiny, our suitcases are on the floor beside my side of the bed which I have to step in to get into bed. We rested a bit, then we all headed out to catch a bus to watch "Mousetrap" at a theater. All the subways (the tube and the trains are on strike and so the buses are super crowded!

DAY 1 Tuesday Sept. 9th

They served us dinner and breakfast on the plane!!  Who knew?

We stayed at the old Brompton Inn in South Kensington.

We didn't get back to the motel until after 10:30pm. We were tired and 'ready for beddy' as my mommy says!!

DAY 2 Wednesday Sept 10

We slept until 9am, then hurried at got ready for our first day of seeing London!! I can honestly say that London is AMAZING! The old buildings with unique architecture just keep going on and on. Every street we went on had beautiful old buildings. Again, we got on the bus (for $8 a ride per person). Everyone has to have their own card and LaVerl forgot his credit card, so he had to borrow one of Hanks to get around all day. We bought some other 'all day pass', but it only worked once, so not a good deal. We toured on the bus a while, then got off and walked over 5 miles that day. We rode "The Eye", a huge ferris wheel. We walked through 'China town' and had a good meal there. Then we walked and walked trying to find the right bus location for our night tour of the city. My watch says we walked 5 miles!

It rained on us quite a bit!

So I learned something new- This is what I thought was called "Big Ben" the clock, right? No- Big Ben is actually the bell of the Great Clock of Westminster. The Tower is the 'Elizabeth Tower'. The gorgeous building is Westminster Abbey.

The "EYE" - the most popular tourist attraction in London, over 3 million people ride it every year. London has 32 buroughs and the 'Eye' has 32 capsules to ride in and it takes 32 minutes to go all the way around. Very clever! The river is the Thames. 

They have 'uber boats!'

Can you see us girls hiding behind the crew?

The night tour was awesome. London at night!

That was the end of a long day of sight seeing in London!!

Almost All of August.....

August is almost over and I haven't  posted any pictures!! Where does time go?

Kari's family was in Hawaii the end of July when the tsunami from the earthquake in Russia hit. Luckily, Oahu, where they were, wasn't hit at all.  What a relief!! Also they ran into Kalani Sitake (BYU head football coach) at a grocery store

The kids got a little freaked out because of all the sirens going off. They headed to high ground and were the last ones to leave!

Then a couple of weeks later, little Gabe had to get his tonsils out!

Not only are we dealing with elk in our front yard, we also have deer!

LaVerl and I finished putting up the boards to get our fence finished. 

We still have some painting to finish. 

We went over to St. Johns to visit Mom and put in a Bidet for her, then went to lunch. 

The next day, my sweet brother in law came over to look at my sprinklers. My lawn has died in lots of places, it's so sad!!

We went to Snowflake and took J'net with us. I gave Chad a haircut and after the temple, we went to lunch. 

August 18th, we headed up to Provo, UT with Randel and Nancy Penrod to go BYU Education Week. We met up with Sonja and Randy, who had to drop Mom off at my brother Curt's house in Mesa first. We all stayed in the dorms, went to lots of great classes and had a great time, but, we didn't get one group pic!!

We had a little excitement on Wednesday! I had ventured out by myself to go to a different class than the others and ended up passing out waiting for the elevator!! Earlier, while walking with Sonja to a class, I told her I must be having a 'sugar rush' (since I had eaten only M & M's, choc covered raisins, a fruit bar, etc) because I was feeling weird and kind of dizzy. I didn't think much of it, since it passed. I don't remember much, just waking up to about 4 paramedics standing over me and that my head hurt. They insisted I go to the ER, so off I went! They got a hold of LaVerl and he told the rest of the gang, so they all came to the hospital. They took my blood, put in an IV and took a CT scan of my head. Later, the ER Doc put a couple of staples in my head to close up the split I had. They said I was dehydrated, which causes blood pressure to drop and that was why I passed out!

After that ordeal, we met Aunt Nan at Olive Garden for dinner!

We took them to see the BYU Fanhouse!! 

Mark has 2 nectarine trees, which were loaded with fruit and 1 pear tree at the funhouse. We were so sad we had no boxes and no room to take very many.

Reed and Natali's little Rome Enzo is 4 months old this month!!

Some of our kids hiked the Tetons in August. Tami planned it all and got the permits.  So Tami & Ryne, with Blake and Colter went. Bret took Kingston and he took a friend, Talmage. Lisa came by herself. Kari brought Rivers and Elijah! They said it was AWESOME!!

LaVerl has a pretty nice garden, which he works hard in. 

Lisa, Adlee, Blake and Lilly all had birthdays this month!

Lisa is the one holding the balloons!

Adlee turned 8
Blake is 15!

Lilly will be 10! Aug. 29th.

Mark's family has moved to Mesa and are finally in their new house. It's a beauty-7400 sq. ft. on almost an acre!  WOW!

Well, that's about it for August.  It was a great month, however it's been hot here with no rain, which is sad and bad.