Labor Day in London

We're back, and on the other side of our move! Boxes, boxes, everywhere, oh, and the big surprise we discovered when unpacking ... but that's for another post. We love our little village, although three weeks without internet or phone was a little challenging, not to mention isolating! So now that we've caught up with grandmas on both coasts, we're back to the blog. We had planned to be in London this weekend with my brother and his family who are visiting, but the stomach bug came for a visit as well! So let's relive our last trip to London over Labor Day weekend when we visited our dear friends, Steve and Lisa Messersmith and their lovely family!

We took the train from Cheltenham to Padding Station. Train travel is so fun, isn't it? There were activity packets on the train for the children that were all about Paddington Bear and his adventures. After an uneventful trip we arrived in London and made our way to the Underground to find that our line was closed for construction!

I must say we did pretty well navigating the tube. We had a few pieces of luggage, the bigger kids walking, and the little guys on the double stroller. It was nice being able to get them quickly on and off the tube on the stroller, but we did run into some challenges with the stairs and escalators. With a little ingenuity, we arrived unscathed!

Bro. Steve met us at the Underground station just a few minutes walk from their church. Wow! They have a beautiful building that I did not do justice to in these few pictures. We were too busy catching up to get any more.

Charles Spurgeon and his son, both had a part in forming this church, amazing, isn't it?

We enjoyed a wonderful Sunday with them and I was more than happy to fill in for their pianist, who was away. The people at Chiswick Baptist (pronounced Chiz-ik, just so you know :) were so friendly nd treated us like honored guests. The Filipino ladies of the church cooked the most amazing dinner, oh my! I'm so dissapointed we'll be missing that tomorrow.

We had a wonderful time eating, talking, and laughing with Steve and Lisa and the kids couldn't have been more happy to be together. It's not often that we get together with a family that has more kids than we do. The Messersmith six are the sweetest kids you'd want to meet. Most of the pictures I tried to take ended up looking like this ... a bunch of bouncing kids and Emily, always serene in the midst of chaos :)

Now on to those darling kids ...

Felicity

Jacob ... to their credit, I snapped these two at the park, so they were in full play mode :)

serene Emily :)

Bard, Zachary and the apples he picked

Jacob, again :)

cutie Micah

you would not believe how excited this grown man got over the Goodyear blimp :)

Stephen

There was a LOT of crazy boy play in that short weekend!

"Why, Lissy, you're twirling just like a princess?"
"That's because I am a princess."
"Well, of course!"

and their amazing mother, Lisa, what a sweet lady, so sad to miss our weekend together :( She let me eat spoonfuls of Nutella out of her jar all weekend and never said a word. Really, that's the measure of a true friend, isn't it?

oops, afraid I caught her mid bite, but such a nice picture anyway. She so graciously gave up her room for us to sleep in. She is beautiful on the inside and out! I hope I have a daughter like her one day :)

On Sunday night we had kebabs ... oh my, yum! This was a new food for me, but we've tracked down a couple of kebab shops in Cheltenham since. They cook the meat and then shave it off and pile it on top of an open pita with a bunch of yummy veggies on top and some great sauce. Yum! We can't wait to go back to London to see our sweet friends and I'm sure we'll get around to seeing some sights one of these trips. It's nice to not have pressure to do everything at once.

Don't forget to ....