Pa and Grandma Barbara

Pa (Jason's dad) and Grandma Barbara (Jason's step-mom) came to visit with their friends Karen and Mark.  They flew in from France where they'd been living it up for the first part of their vacation.  We all had a fantastic time visiting and site-seeing together but I think we all agreed that their visit could have been longer!

Here are a few pics from their visit:

We sneaked a group photo in by using a big (rain spotted) mirror:

Here is a group of Pa and Grandma Barbara with their good friends Karen and Mark:

And a group photo of the Hungerfords on Hungerford Bridge!

One of Charlie's favourite parts of their visit was holding their hands and walking around the city:

We tried to get a good shot of the three of them, but couldn't quite manage:

But we did get a good picture of Jason and his dad in front of the Tower Bridge while we were visiting the Tower of London:

Our last hurrah together was to take a flight on the London Eye.  Jason and I had take a ride on The Eye back in 2007 for our fifth wedding anniversary and we were excited to ride it again.  It was a stunning view at dusk, but it made it a bit difficult to get pictures of people in our pod!

Charlie still talks about them all the time; we can't wait for them to come back!

Bonfire Night 2012

After a fantastic Bonfire Night last year in Blackheath, Jason and I had our expectations pretty high for this year.  We were initially planning on heading back to Blackheath, but then a friend told me that Crystal Palace Park was hosting a fun fair and fireworks.  We were especially wooed by reading about the special "fewer bangs" kid's show at 7pm.  (Unlike Blackheath, they charge £5 for adults but all the proceeds go to charity.)  We decided to give it a try and were so happy we did.  It was a great time and nice to be able to walk home afterwards.  

Here is a little video I took of the main event:

Jason and I agreed that despite being a kid's show, it was one of the best displays we'd ever seen!

Most of the pictures didn't turn out because it was so dark, but at least you can get an idea of what we were up to:

Yes, I know her coat is a bit small.  She now has a new bright green one!

Mama was nice and shared her hot chocolate with marshmallows.

Jason tried to win Charlie a HUGE stuffed animal.
He didn't win, but at least all the proceeds went to charity.  :)

We passed on the fun fair, but you can see some lights and rides in this picture.

Waiting for the fireworks to start.

She gripped Jason's head pretty tightly at times, but overall seemed to really love it!

And for reference, here is a picture of Jason and Charlotte at last year's event.  She's sure grown a lot of hair since then!

Halloween 2012!

First and foremost, check out this little monkey:

Okay, now that that's taken care of, let me tell you about our Toddler Halloween Extravaganza!  My friend Mary called me while I was in Miami and said, "You're not going to have time to play your Halloween party.  Let me do it."  I couldn't say no!  We had a powwow on the phone about the overall plan and then she set to work buying Halloween themed plates, cups, napkins and even pull piñata (where you pull strings to open it instead of bashing the living daylights out of it).  She also made this adorable spider fishing game with magnets!  

(As you can see below, Mary is pregnant with twins!  YOWZA!)

And here is a shot of the piñata chaos:

The other big activity was pizza time!  Mary and I found some adorable mummy pizzas on Pinterest that we recreated:

photo from my Instagram feed

They were even cute once we cooked them!  We served them with ghost bananas and scary apple/peanut butter/raisin mouths.  

a terrible shot, but you get the idea

We decided that the easiest way to serve five toddlers at once would be to just have them all sit on the kitchen floor.  It worked really well!

Notice how the juice boxes were wrapped in paper pumpkin faces?  Mary's a super mom, I'm tellin' ya.  

We had a great time and things were much improved from our makeshift Halloween last year (where we put Charlotte in her fluffy white lamb coat and called it a day).  We were all sad that Jason couldn't join us, but he had fun looking at pictures when we got home.  We also got quite a few trick-or-treaters!  (Although, I had to put up signs to get them to come to our house!  Haha!)