Happy Anniversary to You!!!

Happy One Year Anniversary to Kelly, Alain, Paige, & Colby :)

Yes, another family has made that miraculous milestone of making it through a year in Prague!!!

You may remember a past post or two right about this time last year when we were all exceptionally excited at their impending arrival - we would have new friends to go through this with and the kids are all close in age so there were play dates to be had as well. There was also the additional bonus of their extreme kindness in doing a weeks worth of shopping for us that shipped in their container ;)

It has been a wonderful year having them here and you can check out their blog to see how the Prague Experience has been for them: www.lavelanet.org

Happy, Happy Anniversary!!!

Train Ride to London

Thursday, April 28th

We started our first real day in the UK by traveling via train from the East Midlands area to London proper. The very first thing I noticed was that people here must not have babies/infants or be handicapped because there were no facilities to assist them from one side of the station to another. There were signs basically stating that you would be taking your life into your hands if you needed to use the access path across the tracks - they have unbelievable High Speed trains that pass through and the only way to guarantee safe passage from one side to another was to use the Upper Walkway...3o or more steps up and down. Oh what fun with all the bags and the defective stroller!

The joy continued as we got on board to the announcement that the Reservation System was was down and since they could not prove who had purchased Reserved Seating (God forbid they actually READ the tickets which state this) it would be open seating. So glad that I spent the extra money on seats for the kids! Ben and Alex made it into an actual car compartment while Logan and I were in the passage/doorway with a jump seat that I had to get out of at each stop. Oh and I cannot forget to mention that I got to move the stroller around quite a bit since each station platform was on a different side.

The icing on this journey was when I saw Ben coming my way and motioning to Alex to stay put - which of course did not happen. He was looking for wipes since Alex had been sick and he had used up his supply already. I took her into the bathroom and cleaned her up good as new. However the only thing she was upset about was that she had ruined her Brand New Barbie Magic Activity Book which she had received from our friend Lyuba and we had saved special for this trip. Now we had to look for a stroller and a replacement Barbie item as soon as we hit London!

Along the way we were treated to some very lovely picturesque scenes of English countryside, hamlets, and small burgs. Evening it out were a few spots that could easily pass for Oslo's backyard (Keeping Up Appearances for those not 'in the know') but it was simply gorgeous for the most part and made me wish that we could have a country home here....or just move in general :)

Logan slept for almost the entire ride which canceled out the purpose of his first "Thomas-like" experience but a sleeping Logan probably made things easier on the whole, plus he woke up in time to witness the absolute beauty of St. Pancras - Yes, it IS beautiful - so he got to see many trains and it was most likely an entire Isle of Sodor moment for him in the end.

With just a bit of an issue we were able to get all of our baggage off the train and begin our London Experience. So all we had to do now was find our way out of the station, find our hotel, try to find a new Barbie Activity Book, find a new stroller, and pray that there would be no more issues. The stress-free holiday I was hoping for was slipping through my fingers...bu it was still early so there was hope!

Not so Easy (Jet) Start to our Holiday

I received some flak for wanting to keep all these posts in chronological order...seems no one would scroll back to see that there were a bunch of new entries so I have changed the dates from the original time period (April & May) so that they will appear 'new'.

April 27th


Wednesday night we kicked off our trip with a 21:55 (that's 9:55pm to our readers in the States) flight to the Nottingham East Midlands Airport. We had the usual running around and crazy rush out of here but things were looking good in the schedule department and we were ready to start a stress-free holiday.

We have decided not to kill ourselves with rushing too much as long as Logan is under the age of 2. See, we still get Priority Boarding without having to pay for it so it does not matter what time we check in since we will be in the Second Priority Boarding Class until August 4th :) This means we can allow some extra breathing room using the Public Transportation to the airport - which we need when we have (3) bags for check-in, (3) Carry Ons, and a Stroller :)

We had a very nice, uneventful (read: no one got sick for a change) flight to the UK and were ready to just go through Customs, get our bags, and use whatever method necessary to reach the Travelodge we were staying at for the night. Ben took charge of getting the luggage while I ran off with Alex to find the nearest W/C - the poor girl had been holding it in for almost 20 minutes and we were reaching critical leg clenching.

When we exited the Ladies Room, we saw Ben with all the luggage and Logan in his stroller - Great, I thought, two things down and one to go. Insert typical Dramatic Music here. As we approach I notice that Ben is making a lot effort to make eye contact before I get to the desk he is standing by. "Small problem" he says...and moves over to the stroller to demonstrate the new fold over ability of the handle which was broken in transport. With the aid of a Service Rep we get the Damaged Bag claim filled out and our sheet of instructions for how to finalize the claim upon our return. Another attendant realizes we are SOL without two working handles and runs off to find something to use as a brace and something close to Duct Tape. This proved to be a good short term fix but it would not last more then a day or 2 max.

Now, anyone who knows what I have to do daily with this stroller can appreciate just how horrible this situation was for me. To make matters worse, it had to be broken on this portion of our trip...the first few hours, in the most expensive city of all.

With nothing to be done at 11pm at night, we gathered our items and I pushed the stroller one handed to an Information Kiosk. We were told our best bet would be a Taxi to our lodging and we carefully folded down the stroller and made sure it sat on top of everything for the ride. We checked in and collapsed since we had an early start the next morning to catch a train from Loughborough Station to St. Pancras International in London. With GBP signs swimming in front of my eyes, I fell into a fitful sleep...worries about finding a suitable replacement that I could carry up 8 flights of stairs plagued me most of the night and unfortunately blew the stress-free start.