London!

Our flight left Washington DC at 10:30 at night.  We ate supper before we got on the plane and as soon as we took off, we told the kids to all try to go to sleep.  Amazingly...they did!  (Perhaps we may have helped them to sleep their sniffles with some Benadryl...just sayin'...)  So after a good 5 hours of sleep or so for most of us, we landed in London.  We dropped off a lot of our carry-on bags at a secure storage facility and took off to the tube...a one hour train ride into down town. By the time we made it there we had about 5 hours to burn before we absolutely needed to be back on the tube.  So we literally had a fly-by tour of part of London.  That gave us enough time to get off at Piccadilly Circus, walk to Big Ben, eat lunch by the Thames, take a quick walk through Westminster Abby, walk by Buckingham Palace and head back to the Tube.  By the end of the day, the kids were ready to get back on the plane and sleep their way to Uganda.

Now for the onslaught of pictures...

Taking the tube...

Of course, you have to climb into the red phone booth...mind you...the kids had no idea why and thought we were crazy when we told them to climb in...then they thought it was hilarious when they later saw all sorts of other tourist doing the same "weird" thing...

We missed the changing of the guard at Buckingham, but we did see the guard change at this Calvary museum.  That was fun.  Only a few of the kids were brave enough to stand next to the horse for a picture though.

 Big Ben... as you can see, it was a beautiful day...lower 70s and mostly sunny...although we got rained on once, but only for about 5 minutes.

Katelyn...

Eating Lunch by the Thames, across from Big Ben...

And this, my friends, is exactly how we made it through London with eight kids. :) Soooo good! :)

Most people think that Big Ben is tipping because they built the subway underneath, but we all know it is actually Miss Tessa...

Mind you...Timothy doesn't help matters either... :)

Then on to Westminster...we could have spent all day there...but alas...we had about an hour.  While there, we discovered that there are perks to being in London with 8 kids, ages 11 and under...and one of them is that Westminster doesn't charge for kids ages 11 and under. :)  They might have momentarily regretted that upon seeing all of us come in though. :)  The kids thought that the coolest part was seeing the room of the knights and the sword that was used to knight them.  So many people that we know from history are buried there.  It was absolutely amazing.  Too bad I couldn't take pictures inside....actually Eric is probably happy that I couldn't take pictures inside...we might not have caught our last flight. :)

Then onto Buckingham Palace.

Talitha chillin'...not on a beach in the Carribean...just at Buckingham palace...

All of us were extremely jealous of Talitha and Benaiah being able to sleep in the stroller by the end of the day...

But, it wasn't too long before we were back at the airport, watching the sun-set, and ready for the next flight...