New Year's in London

We spent New Years Eve down in London with Julia and Kezia-Rachel's sisters. It was sweet. We went to a chineese restaurant and traveled throughout london on the underground trains. We stood on a bridge to watch the fireworks. It was freezing. We had to get there early because they closed it off once it reached a 180,000 so we had to make sure we got a spot. The fireworks we awesome but our toes were frozen! Getting back was hetic as there were thousands of people all trying to get on the trains. Took us nearly 3 hours to get back to our hotel. What a night. New Years we headed towards Milton Keynes, close to Birmingham, and while the girls went shopping I went snowboarding in an indoor snow dome. It was good, but not like the snow back in Utah.

Christmas Day!!

This is us on Christmas Day. We spent some of the morning in bed.....until about 830, where rach woke me up telling me that 'Santa had come.' We went over to her parents later to have a big christmas day feast followed by presents. They got a Wii, so as you can imagine, we played on that for as long as we could. We also spent christmas over at some friends in the ward playing Disney and ABBA Singstar and mariokart on the Wii.

I've shaved my goatee....

It was time for a change. I'm not sure if I'll grow it back.

Time for a poll. Let me know if you think it looks better with or without.

Day out in London

Rachel and I went to visit her grandparents in Eastbourne, just south of London. We decided on the way back to go into London for a day and visit some of the sights we haven't seen before. When we were dating we saw all the major things like Big Ben, London Bridge, and Buckingham Palace. We went to the Tower of London. The Crown Jewels are stored here- if only we could take one of the jewels from there, man we'd be rich!! We also saw them change the guards there, which was cool!

Up the stairs in one of the towers

Changing of the guard

Guy Fawkes Day

Guy Fawkes Day is on November 5th and it's to celebrate catching a person by the name of Guy Fawkes from blowing up parliment. It's a day of fireworks and bon fires. Some people make a dummy in remembrance of him and throw it on the fire. We went to the local city carnival. The carnival carried on throughout the night and after watching the fireworks we went on one of the rides. It was fun.

Halloween

We celebrated Halloween over two days. We had a halloween party with the ward here with food, games, quizzes and those who wanted to could decorate their trunk and we had 'trunk or treat.' Here, a trunk is called a 'boot' but it doesn't sound right to say 'boot or treat' :) We didn't dress up since we were poor and would've been the only adults dressed as something- looking completely out of place!

We also celebrated it with friends doing pumpkin carving and games. Rachel did bobbing for apples and took part in the mummy wrapping race.