Catching Up

I have so much to post about and so little time to do it. I will try to get caught up in the next couple of days.

Scooter's mom came to visit us in Oxford and we had a great time showing her around. Scooter and I flew home from our Aegean cruise into Heathrow airport. At the same time Scooter's mom flew into Heathrow as well and we met her in the airport. It was her first trip out of the country, so it was a great adventure for her. We kept her pretty busy the first couple of days. We showed her Scooter's library at Lincoln College.


We played a little croquet. I lost.


We laughed at the tiny milk cartons you can buy.


We came up out of the underground to see this. Jody cried.


In case you haven't seen Ben's face up close lately.


We saw the Houses of Parliament.


Big Ben was looking particularly handsome that day if you ask me.


We went to Westminster Abbey.


There was a marathon that day so the streets were blocked off by all of the most famous sites. We thought we would take advantage and do something that you would never be able to do otherwise - sit on Westminster Bridge.
We walked a cross a lot of bridges.


We went to the matinee of Lion King. I was enchanted by the costumes. Truly genius!


We sat in one of the boxes on the side, which was fun.


We went to the Tower of London.


We saw Tower Bridge.


We befriended some policemen.


We tried to make friends with this guy...


We will never get sick of telephone booth pictures.


We walked down The Mall to Buckingham Palace.


Admired Buckingham Palace and its lovely fountain.


We loved these gates at Buckingham Palace and Green Park.



We saw As You Like It in Shakespeare's Globe theatre and discovered that "all the world's a stage."


We walked by the Thames.



We walked across Millennium Bridge toward St. Paul's.

Then we told Jody that there was a surprise in store... to be continued tomorrow...

Can You Believe It?

Since I last posted twelve days ago there has been a LOT going on. We have been in three countries - lived in two of those, been enrolled in two schools, and have spent sixteen hours on planes, 22 hours on buses, 4 hours on subways, 24 hours driving a Uhaul, 3 hours waiting in lines to get our passports stamped, and not enough hours sleeping! Here's what has been happening since I last posted: Scooter's mom came to England for a ten day visit; we spent two days in London; slept in an airport; spent three days in Sweden; we packed all of our belongings into six suitcases; Scooter graduated from Oxford in a three hour ceremony in Latin; on Sunday, we moved back to the USA (in a shower of happy and sad tears from me); rented a Uhaul in St. George; took a family photo; moved all of the boxes that we packed a year and a half ago (seriously folks, we have no idea what could possibly be filling up all of those boxes) and stored in my parents basement into the Uhaul; went boating; drove to Provo and saw Scooter's sisters that we haven't seen for over a year; drove 24 hours to Kansas City; went straight to KU medical school (yes, in the Uhaul - Scooter had to parallel park it...) and filled out tons of paper work; moved into the apartment that we had never seen; met nine amazingly helpful guys from our church; and I just dropped Scooter off for his first day of medical school orientation! Doesn't it just make you tired to hear all of that? It makes me really tired... maybe I'll go take a nap.... oh, wait, we have house guests that are going to be here in eighteen short hours (and we couldn't be more thrilled - really!) so I better go find out what is in all those boxes!

Aegean Sea

We got back yesterday from our cruise to Greece and Turkey. It was my first experience on a cruise and I loved it! We started in Athens, Greece After Athens we went to:

Istanbul, Turkey
the island of Mykonos
the island of Patmos
(where John wrote the book of Revelation in a cave after he was exiled there)

Ephesus, Turkey
(As in the Epistle to the Ephesians in the Bible)
The ruins at Ephesus we the best we have ever been to - truly amazing!
This amphitheater seats over 22,000 people! The acoustics are also amazing - no amplification equipment available in 500 BC.
the island of Rhodes
we were on this beach all day

this is the color of the water in the harbor! This is the straight out of the camera shot - I haven't altered it at all!


the island of Cretewe swam in water like this (again - unaltered photo taken from the sidewalk)


and the island of Santorini
It was an amazing trip! We already want to go back.

The Perfect Anniversary Present - Wimbledon!

Note: This post has lots of tennis details that may bore some people.

Scooter and I are both tennis players. We both played in high school and still really enjoy playing together. Our third anniversary was while my parents were here and they gave us tickets to Wimbledon as an anniversary present. Centre court! It was such a fun day - one of our best here in England. When you have tickets to centre court your seat is yours for the entire day. You can also use your ticket to roam around and watch the matches on the other courts. There were three matches played on centre court that day, so we got to see all of them plus some on the other courts as well.

This is the tube stop where you get off to walk to Wimbledon. Look how decked out it is!

It was beautiful weather and it was packed! Here is a view from centre court.

Centre court before the matches started.

There was a lot of testing of the grass before the matches started. These guys were testing how high the ball was bouncing for a while. Other people were checking that the lines were perfectly straight and wide, etc.

The venue is so beautiful and classy. The theme of purple, green, and white is very prevalent. There are tons of beautiful restaurants and places to sit and eat.

This men's doubles team is the best in the world. They are also twins, by the way. Mike and Bob Bryan. It was disconcerting to watch them play. They not only look alike but they play similarly and are crazy in sync. One is left handed and one is right handed.

The first match on centre court was Federer (who is favored to win - if he does he will take the all-time record for most Grand Slam wins from Pete Sampras) vs. Soderling. It was a great match but was really a "serving contest" (Federer's words, not mine) with not many rallies. The final score and gracious winner. He really did seem like such a nice guy. Excellent sportsmanship.


The second match was a ladies match - the number 1 seed playing the number 17 seed. We watched for a while but there were tons of other great matches going on on the outside courts.

In case you ever wanted to see the referees chair in more detail. The Evian fridge is filled with water for the players. The Robinsons bottles above that are filled with squash, which is the English equivalent of powdered drink mix. It is just the flavor concentrate but in liquid form. They also make it by the glass, not by the pitcher like we do in the states. You pour a little squash into your glass and then fill it the rest of the way with water. You can also check out the ball boys and girls new outfits. Aren't they nice? They even all got brand new matching shoes.

Handsome boy...


This is the results board with the score of every game for that particular day. There are 19 courts, so it is nice to have the scores summarized in one place for people to check periodically.


The men's singles draw. You can't tell in the picture because it is so small, but next to each player it also shows the flag of their country. I looked for every American flag because they each felt like a friendly little wave.


This is Ferrero. We were on our way to his court to watch him play and it sprinkled for a about one minute so they stopped all play to check the courts water levels, springiness, etc. While we were waiting for play to resume we looked up and there he was. Once play started again we watched him play for a while.



Scooter spotted Layton Hewitt go into a building when they stopped play and he was so excited - he has been watching him play for years. Bless his heart, Scooter didn't move from that spot for probably half an hour until Hewitt was brought back out to resume his match. He was thrilled to be so close to someone he admired so much.


More beautiful landscaping. See the balcony? They have nice spots to eat all over the venue like this. (We of course were too cheap to eat there - we ate snacks from my handbag all day.)


We were so glad that we didn't have to get one of these because if you have one it means you probably spent 6-24 hours in the queue.


The centre court stadium is the huge building behind me and to the left.


I was loving every minute of this. Need I say more?


Venus and Serena playing doubles. It was incredible to watch them. They absolutely smoked their opponents without even trying that hard. Those girls are gifted.


They were so consistent about encouraging each other between points and also talked to each other and made a plan more than anyone else we had seen that day. Apparently communication is key - they wouldn't be the legends they are if it wasn't working for them.


I just had to ask - what was this girl thinking? The frilly tutu part wasn't sewn down, and it kept flapping when she bounced at all. It was annoying even to watch - I can't imagine how annoying it must have been to wear.

The third match on centre court was the most highly anticipated of the day. Andy Murray, the British's highest hope for a champion, was playing. All day people were queuing to try and get tickets. People even offered to trade tickets with us. We are so glad we didn't because it was an amazing match! This was the first match ever that was played with the roof closed. It lasted three minutes shy if four hours. It went to deuce more times than I could even count. The crowd was SO into the match as well, which was really fun. It was surprising how loud it was when the crowd would gasp simultaneously.
The rallies were long and so fun to watch. There is a reason why these guys are pros - they never miss! All of their groundstrokes are deep, perfectly placed, and precisely angled. Everything they do is well planned and flawlessly executed. It was a thing of beauty.


Andy broke his strings during one of the points - you could hear it. But he played out the entire point using only underspin and even won it! Here he is unwrapping a new racquet. He probably went through a few during his match.


The classic tennis celebration - a fist pump.


This was a tense moment, folks. It was match point. The stadium was absolutely electric.


And then the stadium exploded - it was finally over after four hours of intense play. I'm sure he was partially so thrilled because he was exhausted. It was also almost eleven o'clock at night. Good thing he had a free day the following day.


The handshake. We were so impressed with his opponent Wawrinka. Andy was ranked third and Wawrinka only 19th, but he really gave Andy a run for his money.


He threw his wrist bands into the audience. He also stayed and signed autographs for a long time afterwards.

The closed roof and court cleanup.


What a day!