Hi, Peter here! I was recently “reminded” that I never posted pictures from the last couple of days I was in Europe last February. So here they are. Except for the first one, these are all from my side trip to London. I was pretty busy working the last few days I was in Paris and so I didn’t really get many pictures, and none of them were “blog worthy.”

The weather in London wasn’t the best (it was February) – kind of cloudy and drizzily – but I still got around pretty well (not bad for 5 hours, I think).
Enjoy!

Train station in Paris

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Leaving the Underground in London at Piccadilly Circus
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Walking down Piccadilly; in the left picture (among other things) is the Royal Astronomical Society (two former presidents: William Herschel and Arthur Eddington) and an icon London Taxi. In the right picture is “the” Ritz and an equally iconic British phone booth.
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I ate lunch at the original Hard Rock Cafe. Among the memorabilia were some outfits worn by the Beatles and a gold record by Bob Dylan.

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The London Underground (“The Tubes”) – Mind the gap!

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I walked down to the Thames and London Tower (the Castle/Fort structure). Then I walked across the Tower Bridge (and back). The cool looking building in the background of the middle picture is the “Gherkin” – it’s an office building.

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One for Charlie

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I then went over to Parliament. The lamp posts have gold-leaf crowns on them. Here are some pictures of the clock tower (aka Big Ben) and the Houses of Parliament (aka Westminster Palace).

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Just around the corner is Westminster Abbey. I have several pictures (didn’t have time to wait in line to go inside).

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Here’s St. James Park. The building at the far end is Buckingham Palace. Westminster Abbey is about two blocks behind me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that Downing Street was right behind me, too. Missed visiting #10.

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Buckingham Palace. I saw the guards marching but the famous “Changing of the Guards” only happens once per day (I think at 10am) so I didn’t see it. The Queen was in the Palace (the flag was flying on top).

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An old-fashioned double-decker bus! This model seemed pretty rare; I saw lots more of a much more modern model driving around.

That’s all! Coming soon – pictures from my trip to Germany!

Here are some pictures of the boys from out in the backyard this evening:

Drew had a blast kicking the ball around the yard. I think we might put him in soccer this fall!

Check out Drew’s face as he went into the water!

Ryan’s cheesy grin.

Yes…Drew has his head in the water.

He is so proud that he got his hair wet. Well….at least the front of his hair.

Ryan starting to get mad that he cant walk off with the water hose.

Ahh..the full blown tantrum.

He just splashed water in his face. He didnt like it…AT ALL.

He had a BLAST playing with the water hose…..UNTIL…

he splashed himself in the face with the water. He did this quite often. You would think we would learn after the first 2 or 3 times.

Just lookin cute!

Here are some pictures of Ryan tummy surfing down the stairs.

Drew always wakes up before us and I’ve told him that if he is hungry he needs to come tell us so we can get him food. Well….. he is Mr. Independent now and decided he wanted pudding. This is what we came down to:

And then we opened the fridge…..

yes…he “made” pudding. That is just the pudding mix in the bowls that he put in the “fridgeator”. We got a good laugh out of that this morning!

Yesterday we went swimming in our community pool with Blake, Elicia, and Taylor. Drew had a BLAST! We put floaties on his arm but he wouldnt go off and swim by himself. He held onto Peter most of the time until he got into Ryan’s float ring and discovered that he could go off by himself with the ring AND the arm floaties. Then by the end he was swimming with just the arm floaties by himself! Ryan didn’t have as much fun as the rest of us did. He wanted to run around the outside of the pool rather than being in the water. This was the first time he had been in a big pool so he was scared but hopefully he will get used to it!

And… Ryan has now learned to come down the stairs by himself. But instead of backwards crawling down the stairs, he backward tummy surfs down the stairs. Its too cute! And his new work is “bonk”- like if he hits his hands on the table or his head against our heads he says “bonk”.

So Drew is Mr. Independent right now. He will NOT let me help him get dressed. And he pulls out many outfits before he decides on which one to wear. And he has decided that he has “light time jammies and shirts” and “night time jammies and shirts”. Its quite annoying actually. This morning he was putting on the jammies that he wore last night and I asked him if he wanted to wear something else since those were dirty and he said “No mama, these are PERFECT for me”. LOL!

And the big news from Drew is that he poopied on the potty for the first time today!!!!! We are so excited! We called Dada, Bebe, and Grammie to tell them!

Ryan just cut his 12th tooth. He has also learned to climb up the stairs but refuses to try and come down on his own. He said hi now but it sounds like “ya”.

Here are some of the thigns that Ryan learned to do:

throws the ball

drinking from a straw

tries to use a fork or spoon to eat but all he really does is dips it in the food and then licks the fork or spoon.

mimicks talking on the phone.

climbing on sofa

climbing down from sofa

words he is saying: wow, da (dog), ba (ball)

He also just cut his 11th tooth last week but that goes under his 14 month milestones!

Here are 2 short videos of Ryan. I have more but they are too big to upload.

sorry I cant get the videos to post. Will keep trying!

Last week Ryan had a blast playing in the sprinkler while Peter was watering the lawn:

Fun in the sun and water

This is in the pool in our backyard. It was Ryan’s first time in the pool.

I was teaching Drew to blow bubbles in the water. He HATES having his face in the water so Im trying to work with him to get him more comfortable.

I just love his buddah belly!

Playing at the water park

The red bucket had just dumped water on Drew

This is Ryan walking under the big buckets and he never got water dumped on him.

I know I haven’t updated the blog with pictures in a while- sorry! But I am making up for it now!

Here are pictures from our trip to Baton Rouge to visit Grammie and Poppop and Kenny, Shawn, and cousin Eric:

Chillin’ with Poppop

Ryan and Grammie

Ryan eating a lemon

Drinking from a straw

Drew and his silly mask

Drew coming back from a walk with Grammie

Drew, Ryan and baby Eric

And here are pictures from Drew’s last day of preschool:

Drew and Ms. Kim

Drew and Ms. Tamra

SPLASH DAY!!!

Drew going up the big water slide

He got really scared at the top and so he came down with one of the teacher’s little girls. Note his look of sheer terror.

Here is he soaked from the splash pool at the bottom of the slide. He was NOT happy about it.

Playing on the jumpy