Holiday Greetings...

(click on the image to enlarge)

Capital city...

So our trip to London was a great success. The journey there was uneventful with the twins sleeping the entire way. We then had a little bit of trouble finding the hotel, which was entirely due to getting directions on Multimap.com to the wrong address. The hotel itself was great. Very close to Paddington Station it is very conveniently situated and well run by helpful and pleasant staff. It was also quite inexpensive - relatively that is. The night in the hotel was OK, the twins were a bit fussy. We were then up early in the morning on Friday and started the two mile walk to the American Embassy. Once again the kids were well behaved and it was actually a nice walk with a stop off at McDonalds for breakfast. Once at the Embassy our paperwork was processed pretty quickly and we were out of there within two hours. So with a little time to kill we took a short wander down Oxford Street, did a bit of Christmas shopping. Friday was also the very last day of normal service for the famous Routemaster red double-decker buses in London and it was a surprisingly thrilling moment when we saw one drive by. I managed to get a few photos of it (I wasn't alone - there were many people taking photos). Anyway, after returning to the hotel and loading up the car we were on our way home by noon on Friday.


Marla and the twins in front of Marble Arch.


One of the last ever Routemaster buses in normal service in London.

Gosh, what a long time it's been...

Time flies when you have twins, I can tell you. We are all reasonably well. Both Morgan and Maddie have their moments when they are very unhappy and cry a lot. We think it is mostly due to gas pains, although things have started to improve ever-so slightly over the last few days. They both sleep longer at night time now, which is very nice for us. They do wake every so often and wimper and cry a bit but we just wrap them up and pop their dummy (pacifier) back in their mouth and they generally drop off to sleep again.

They both also have moments when they are very happy. Smiles seem to completely overcome Morgan sometimes and his entire body moves. Maddie gets so excited sometimes that she lets out little screams! They both have their own personalities already. It's great.

We are all going to London tomorrow. We are staying overnight at a hotel and then going to the US Embassy in the morning to get the kids' births registered and apply for their passports. It will be an adventure, that's for sure.

I have quite a few photographs of them, follow this link to go to my Flickr set dedicated to them:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunface13/sets/1118406/

There more on the digital camera, which I will have to upload tonight if I have time. There are also some on the SLR but I will have to finish the film before I can get them online.