It has come to my attention, again, that I am too often posting about things that happened months ago. Sometimes months and months ago. (Stay tuned for my post about our family trip to Edinburgh LAST DECEMBER!) Anyway, life is busy busy, as it is for everyone, and even though I am still catching up, here are a few things that are going on right now.
1.) Jayce's school is going well. I mentioned to Chris on Monday that a year ago that day was when Jayce had a major meltdown, and we decided to only send him for half days until he was a little more comfortable. I know I have mentioned it several times on here recently, but it's just so great to look back on a time that was filled with stress and uncertainty and see how far he has come. Every day we'll ask him what his favorite part of the day was, and usually he says "playing with my friends." A year ago, he would say "when mom came to pick me up." So yes, this is much much better.
2.) Chelsea is here!! Just over a week ago Hannah and I were anxiously awaiting her arrival at the airport where I chewed off all of my fingernails and Hannah ran all around the arrival area. We were so happy to see her, she's an old pro at getting around town, and she's going to do great in her program. She is one of the easiest people to get along with and has made a pretty seamless transition into living with us, from my perspective at least, although I know she is feeling a real lack of The Bachelor/Bachelorette.
On that note, and this is may seem kind of random, I'm not really going to write much on here about how Chelsea is doing/what she is up to, because it just doesn't feel right to me. I certainly write about our families and siblings sometimes, but I kind of feel like the ins and outs of Chelsea's life, even living in with us, just isn't my story to tell. If you're wondering about Chelsea feel free to send her an email and ask! :)
3.) Just before we went to the US, literally the day before, I went and traded my new but horribly incompetent sewing machine for a different new machine. So I am back to sewing! Since we've been back I've already made Hannah a reversible dress, 4 tops, and a shirt for Jayce that I am extremely proud of! There was lots and lots of patting myself on the back for Jayce's shirt and I'll get some pictures this weekend.
One of the shirts I made for Hannah was pattern testing for Kate for this pattern. It has evolved a bit since I sewed my version, which is part of the point of pattern testing, I think. I just got my copy of the final pattern yesterday, so I'll try that out soon as well.
4.) Along those lines, (along the lines of sewing, anyway), I have some other news. I'm going to start selling again and I think the photo above will give you enough hints for the moment. More on that later, but I'm very excited. :)
5.) Next weekend Chelsea and Chris are both running in a half marathon that starts at this gorgeous place. I'll do my best to get pictures, but I don't think you can beat a shot like the one above, which was not mine but the event's photographer that got it. Love it.
Happy weekend.
The weather behaved like a perfect bell curve when Mom and Chelsea were here: starting beautiful and warm, getting warmer each day until mid-trip, when it started dropping off, and by the last day it was downright cold. Okay, it was low 50s, but walking around with the wind kicked up like it was, it felt like the 40s. 
Anyway, we hadn't made it down to the London Bridge so we headed that way, planning to go out for a nice celebratory dinner afterwards to celebrate Chelsea's graduation from college and acceptance into SMUC and to celebrate Mother's Day. 
We got off the train, walked over to the river and started walking down towards the bridge. But we came across this little rock sculpture thing that just begged to be walked on, so we stopped to let the kids run around a bit.
Just behind the sculpture was this little obstacle course sort of thing, 
and a little 40 meter dash station. The meters were marked out along the ground and there was a timer set up on a light pole at the end. 
We assume this was all set up when the Olympics were in town. There was no sort of plaque or anything telling why it was randomly stations between a few buildings, and it seems like a good enough guess, so we're just going to go with it for now. See the gray marble blocks below? They will become important in a minute.
Mom and Jayce were playing around on the logs for a bit and Mom was trying to get him to come on because it was time to go. My wonderful mom, whose agility does not quite match her enthusiasm when playing with her young grandson, tried to jump over or hop onto one of these marble blocks and didn't quite make it. She went down and hit her head on the edge of one of the blocks which immediately started gushing blood.
I called them at about this point in the trip to inform them that we would need to go to a different hospital than the one we had went to, and since it was a bit further away we decided to all meet up, ride over together, and then split up. 
After a solid round of pictures in front of beautiful tulips, we decided to head over to Buckingham Palace. 
Jayce really wanted to climb up on the bottom of the statue for a picture, so we gave it a good effort. 
But it was really slick and he kept slipping off. And so did I when I tried to climb up and help him. So mom held me up while I was trying to hold Jayce up. But it worked, and we got "hands in the air in victory" pictures.
Then a bunch of people walked in front of Chelsea, repeatedly, and she took pictures anyway. So we threw up a U o fL sign in honor of Chris who was not with us because he was working, and jumped back down.
Then we went over to see the guard. He came out and marched across once and then went back to his station. 
Jayce (representing U of L again), was pretty unimpressed, so he decided to get his head stuck in between the spokes. But only for a second.
Hannah was completely unimpressed. I guess she's seen the guards before.
Next we headed back over to the park to get some ice cream for Mom who had been asking about it relentlessly. (No, seriously.) Then we proceeded to have our ice cream in an almost unrealistically idealistic setting.
The trees were FULL of those tiny white flower petals that come just before the leaves. The ground beneath one tree in particular was completely coated with them, and the branches were so low-hanging that we had to duck to get beneath them. It was almost like we were in our own personal green and white floral dome, shaded from the warmest day of the year so far, and overlooking London's Green Park which was buzzing with happy park go-ers. It was amazing. 
But then Hannah stole my melted ice cream cone and somehow flung it all over her face and hair,
and was so distraught that Chelsea had to run away with her to try to distract her from her misery.
Jayce realized that hitting these low hanging branches sent showers of white petals all over the ground and anyone standing underneath them. 
So he charged at them all, branch/sword in hand,
until he had defeated them all.
We wandered around for a bit more, ate dinner, and headed back to the train station. 
Jayce played happily on someone's phone, Mom and I passed Hannah back and forth, and Chelsea slept. It was a full day for all.
