The Olympics!

Despite applying for over £500 worth of Olympic tickets, we didn't get a single one.  Mary and her husband Rob applied for thousands and thousands of pounds worth of tickets and also got nary a one.  

Mary and her husband eventually scored tickets to watch fencing (through subsequent lotteries) but Jason and I were ticketless.  As you can imagine, we were thrilled when our friends Naina and Josh offered to sell us two of their extra beach volleyball tickets!  Jason ended up going to China for work (again), so Mary was happy to take his ticket.  Here is a group photo of us (and Naina's sister) after the game:

In a crazy stroke of luck, the particular games played last night included both the women's and men's US teams!  There was a very festive atmosphere that was more like a baseball game than anything.  There were people in costumes, people leading the crowd in the wave and quite a few conga lines.  We had a great time and I'm happy to report that both the US men's a women's teams won!  Woo hoo!  They weren't final games, so no one was awarded a medal, but it was still a great time.  (Oh, and we also made it on the jumbotron dancing with a large American flag, but it apparently didn't make it onto US television.  Bummer.)

Here is our view of the US women's team entering the court:

In order to avoid the crowds on the trip home, Mary and I took a nice long walk from the Horse Guards Parade (where the event was held) to the London Bridge station.  We walked along the water and had a great view of the London Eye, Big Ben, Parliament and even Hungerford Bridge:

While we were out for a night on the town, our little ladies were having a slumber party with Mary's husband, Rob.  

And as it turns out, Charlie is COMPLETELY obsessed with Rob.  She talks about him all the time and didn't seem to care at all when Mary and I left.  In fact, she woke up when Mary and I got home and was in absolute hysterics because she wanted Rob to cuddle her and not her mama.  Oy.  

As I looked through my phone for pictures to upload for this post, I randomly found this one of Charlie and Rob.  I'm not exactly sure when this happened, but Charlie loves it:

Charlie ended up falling asleep with me in the guest room (the event started at 9pm and it was too late for us to go home when we got back).  This was my view when I woke up:

We had a fun time playing at the Halliday's this morning before catching a bus back to Crystal Palace.  Once home, we got to FaceTime with Jason who left for China yesterday.  

I'll leave you with a picture of the sweetest cuddle Charlie has even given.  This was the longest, sweetest hug.  It was really heartbreaking because she seemed to really understand that Papa was going to be leaving for a long time and wanted to soak him up before he left.