What a fantastic city London is! Lucy and I had a terrific visit. My cousin Cynthia, her husband Chris and their four children live in a beautiful home in London. It was such fun for us to be in their house and to visit their school. The kids go to the American School of London. The school has two Israeli trained security guards at the front entrance and two security guards at the back entrance. When you arrive at the school they ask to see your badge and all families have badges for security purposes. The school is co-ed and they have about 1,000 students K-12. They do not have a dress code and can wear jeans but no flip-flops or spaghetti straps. After school they have volunteer moms who work at the shop selling ASL clothing and popcorn and snacks to watch games. Smart idea because we went to Grace's eigth grade volleyball game after school and we all bought ASL polar fleece zip up jackets and popcorn! This is all stationed right outside the gym so you have to pass it to go watch the games. Probably a great fundraiser. At night the kids all had homework and so did Lucy so they all sat around the kitchen table comparing classes and amounts of homework. Lucy had much more than they did.

London was very cold and everyone was in full winter gear with hats, gloves, boots, and scarves. We went to Oxford Street shopping and the Christmas decorations are already up in most of the store-front windows. Harrods, a famous London store, had its windows done in Disney characters for the Holidays. Christmas music was already playing and it was VERY crowded. It is half-term here for many of the schools which is a school break. As we were walking along Oxford street we could hardly move. It was jam packed with shoppers. And the same was true when we went to see the Changing of the Guards, but I think that is a very touristy thing to do and imagine it is always hard to get a good spot unless you arrive very early.

Lucy and I did some more of the touristy stuff such as visiting the Tower of London and seeing the Crown Jewels, visiting Westminster Abbey, seeing the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace, and going up in the London Eye. I told you about our Jamie Oliver cooking class that was amazing and another highlight of our trip was seeing the play Matilda. We all dressed up and went to a small theatre about the size of Theatre IV on Broad Street. The show was great and the lead actress was only 10 years old! She had a voice like a bird and it was a very child-centered play, which was really nice for our kids. It was by far one of the best plays I've ever seen and to top it all off Michael Buble was in the audience! A star sighting in London just made our day.