March 2018

Seeing as though it's Easter and in keeping with the theme of Resurrection. . . .a new blog post!

March was a FAST month. We started the month going to Cambridge for the weekend where I ran a horrible half marathon, but we were glad to finally check off Cambridge from the UK bucket list. People said it's a lot like Oxford, only more spread out and I think that's pretty accurate. Whereas Oxford has a fairly small city center with lots of beautiful buildings (colleges, churches, etc) and local landmarks all within a small radius, Cambridge is much more spread out with a residential pockets mixed in whereas Oxford has more of a city and suburb feel to it. While there Finn lost his first tooth! At over 6.5 he has been anxiously awaiting this momentous event! And just this past week he lost his second one!

Then mid month a dear friend of mine came to visit with her daughter. Julie is a baby loss friend I first met in Chicago in 2013 for a big meet up. I was so grateful for her visit and to get to play tourist with her both here in Oxford and a trip to London.

A little over a week after Julie left ANOTHER baby loss friend of mine got to come out for a visit! Sonja and her husband enjoyed a kid free vacation in London and then she took the train out to spend a couple days in Oxford. Getting to see not one, but two of these special friends was so wonderful. 

Also worth remembering - the kids dressed up as their favorite storybook character and Mary wanted to be a dinosaur (thankfully my mom had just sent and ABC dinosaur book) and Finn was a thrown together Harry Potter.

Miles has been busy working on his thesis (due next month) and I'm currently in the thick of training for the London Marathon (the day before said thesis is due). Our time here is going too fast and it's only going to get busier!

early March also brought another snow day!

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Snow Day

On Sunday we woke up to our first proper snow day! It snowed the whole night and when we woke up Miles said, "I don't think you're running today" as I had a 10k race that day, which got cancelled. I went in to wake the kids and it was so neat seeing their reactions when they looked outside. Finn jumped up and looked out the window right by his bed and goes, "ohhh I can build a snowman today!" and hustled to get dressed, heading outside before he even had breakfast. It snowed for the majority of the day and we spent pretty much the whole day outside except to come in and eat and warm up for a bit. It really was such a fun day - I felt like everyone was in such a good mood. I walked into town to get groceries (passing by so many people holding umbrellas which seemed so British to me to use an umbrella in the snow) and everyone was so friendly and we saw so many people outside just wanting to soak up the day before it turned to slush and mush and melted all away (as it did pretty much the following day). But honestly it seemed like it brought out a jovial side in everyone - we all got to be kids for the day. I have NEVER woken up to a snow day that involved actually getting to go enjoy the snow. I never did growing up (because, Arizona) and then while there was lots of snow at West Point there was definitely no running outside to build a snowman. It was more like look at the pretty snow while you walk to class and prepare for a Physics test you'll probably fail. Anyway, this snow day just felt really special. England doesn't get much snow - our neighbors said the last time they had snow like this was in 2011. It barely snowed last year - I remember it did ever so briefly one afternoon and if you weren't outside at the time you would have missed it. So unfortunately this probably will be the only snow day we experience while living in the UK, so I'm especially grateful we could enjoy it so much.

Mary and our neighbor Jack. Aren't they the cutest little things?

Next door neighbors. These buddies have so much fun together.

I took this picture in the morning and the below one in the afternoon -

you can see how much had already fallen off the trees!

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The Italy Trip Recap

I feel obligated to post a recap of our travels while living abroad mostly out of an obligation to my future self who will be annoyed (maybe?) if I just stopped documenting our time here. So here you go future Caroline, here's what you did in Italy in August of 2017:

We flew in to Milan which several people had told us was not a city we needed to bother spending much time in so we didn't. We were only there for the night as we took an evening flight. For the trip we decided NOT to bring carseats or rent a car and instead take the trains which we heard can be late and expensive, but overall we had a really positive experience with them (and it was more affordable than renting a car, paying for gas, and having to deal with the nightmare of trying to find parking everywhere we went). Our first train ride was from Milan out to Vicenza where we linked up with an Army friend of Miles who is stationed there. We were only in Vicenza for a couple days and that included a day trip out to Venice. Venice was beautiful, but crowded and hot. That probably was the theme of an August trip though - beautiful, crowded, and hot. I can definitely see why people find Venice to be so endearing.

Poor kids, having to go to Venice on a hot day. What a rough life.

I took very few pictures from our time in Vicenza, but here are two from a lovely run I went on before we left. This is Monte Berico and the Basilica that overlooks the city of Vicenza.

We took the train to Rome next where we spent the majority of the trip. We did all the touristy things - the Colosseum, Roman Ruins, Pantheon (our AirBnB was a stone's throw away from the Pantheon!), Vatican City, Spanish Steps, we even went out to the coast for a beach day which was a nice break from the tourist things (though those were wonderful).

From Rome we took the train to Florence where we spent the last few days of our trip. I'm so glad we ended the trip here as it wasn't nearly as busy or grand as Rome, but felt more like a peaceful, relaxed city. 

This was probably the best meal of the trip, possibly ever!

While all of the trips we have taken since moving abroad have been special in their own way, Italy was definitely a surreal one. I wouldn't recommend going in August, but it just meant we had to eat gelato at least once every day! 

BOB Strollers - the real MVP

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