London

We're here in London!  We had a long flight - especially since we sat on the ground in Charlotte for almost 3 hours waiting to be de-iced (I don't really trust that procedure, so I was in panic mode).  Luckily for me and my fear of flying, our neighbor Cindi - a flight attendant for US Air - had told our flight attendant to look out for us, so he hooked us up with many little bottles that made the whole fear of crashing seem less pressing.

We arrived Saturday morning, tired but alive, and then had a very Chevy Chase/Family Vacation scene at the airport trying to get into a taxi that could fit all of our bags.  Eventually we did though, and we got to the hotel where we met up with Matt's sister Kate, who had arrived the night before.  Since our room wasn't ready, we decided to hit the Natural History Museum right away.  Very fun - the dinosaur exhibit was awesome.  Unfortunately, exhaustion was starting to catch up with us, as I noted that Matt looked in danger of falling into the animatronic T-Rex exhibit if we didn't get him to a bed right away.  After a long nap, we went out for Indian food and completely stuffed ourselves, which in turn made us ready to go straight back to bed!

Today we are off to sight-see - the Tower, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and anything else we can squeeze in before we leave tonight at 9.  Our goal is to have the boys totally wiped out by the time we get on the plane.  Hopefully it won't backfire - we've already had a few melt-downs related to exhaustion and general crankiness.  But overall, so far so good, and we're getting closer and closer ...