What is your idea of a vacation?

The first text speedily typed with my fingers to my dear English friend Jayne was...

"I am in absolute hell."

Her response was full of sympathy, empathy and total understanding of my situation. It really brought a tear to my eye to think that she was really feeling for me and that I wasn't alone in my thinking. It was...

"Better you than me."

So much for feeling better!


We were sitting in the middle of a forest, the kids were running around on a huge climbing play frame, I'm in a sweatshirt, sweatpants and in my crocs wishing I had socks on. Granted, it's the middle of July and I am freezing my bum off. It was not starting out to be what I would have considered a week of rest and relaxation...aka: our summer holiday. Usually we'd be spending most of the holiday on the St. Lawrence River, soaking up the sun, driving the boat, letting the girls swim their hearts out, roasting marshmallows in the fire pit and having mom make breakfast, lunch and dinner. This summer however, we decided that since I could essentially pop at any point from now until the 1st week of September, traveling via a vehicle propelled by jet fuel probably wasn't the most suitable option. I usually have impeccable timing when comes to things going wrong. So...off to Longleat Forest we trekked in the car, a short 3 hour drive.

I can't honestly say it was awful because it wasn't. The first night was a bit iffy I have to admit. But it did get better. And if I'm being perfectly honest...what vacation was going to be grand when you're 8 months pregnant and walking around like the penguins in Happy Feet?? Certainly not 125 degrees in Dubai although, if I had a chance to go back and trade holidays, my butt would have been on that plane risking labor at 35,000 feet!! That's what next year is for I suppose. In the end, the vacation wasn't at all about me or even Matthew for that matter. It was about the girls and giving them a good time before the little Dunker dude shows himself and then occupies every ounce of attention we have. Avery went horseback riding and attended a jewelry making class.

On her horse...Domino.

Sloane got to paint with sand, sparkles and even string. They both had a great time at the Time Out Club and couldn't get enough of the subtropical swimming paradise. Yes...it was inside. I'm completely convinced that it's the only way to swim in England. I bought a huge wading pool for the back yard this spring in the hopes of a hot and humid summer and it's been up once. Once. Pathetic. Well, I guess if you were up to swimming with a wet suit on then you'd be fine out here.

Av and I after eating the most amazing pancakes ever. Not quite American ones and not quite English ones. Irregardless, they were heavenly and we should have gone back again!

Poor Matt was a pack horse for the week. Sloane in his arms, Avery on his shoulders all the while pushing me and my precious cargo up the hills. It was a rough week for him but he soldiered through it and actually enjoyed getting every bit of attention from his leading ladies.


When we had some time alone all we could chat about is..."what the heck are we going to do with a boy?!" We are completely clueless. It will be an interesting adventure for sure. The girls are all ready to pamper and spoil him rotten. I'm ready to just have him in my arms instead of flipping/kicking/prodding my belly. Thankfully it's just a bump and I haven't expanded into the size of a house despite feeling about 40 sizes larger than normal. No, I'm not about to post a picture...do you think I'm mad? Completely scatter-brained, yes, but I'm not the village idiot. Suffice it to say, I simply look like one day I decided it'd be a good idea to swallow an entire watermelon. And I don't mean the teensy ones you can occasionally find here. The good ole American-sized watermelon. Yep. That's me in a nutshell.

Well, I wouldn't fit in a nutshell but you get the idea.

I just love this kid!

So what else is new? Nothing. We've got the nursery semi-set up. We've got the Aston Martin of strollers on it's way (last kid, I figured what the heck, let's splurge...and silent all you "famous last words" mutterers...it is the last!). We have diapers, baby wash, wipes, cream, 4,000 onesies, 20 crib sheets, baby powder, special shampoo and lotion, shoes for a baby that won't walk for at least 9 months and other pointless baby items that you simply feel compelled to purchase. We even have help on it's way all the way from Australia...a wonderful young gal named Veronica. She's going to be an awesome big sis to the girls and my right hand mate without a shadow of a doubt. We cannot wait for her addition to our ever-expanding family.

What we don't seem to have shored up...despite the healthy weight of it's importance: little dude's name. I guess we've got one that seems to have stuck but we're still not 100% positive and if the other two offspring are any indicators of our process...his name may change the night we hop in the taxi for the hospital. I want it to be cool yet "different". Matt wants him to be able to run out on the football field without his name coming across the loud speaker sounding more like he should be on the drama team (no offense thespians). I think about Avery and Sloane and I can't possibly imagine them as anything other than Avery and Sloane....they have simply grown into their names. So hopefully we can get this one right as well. Otherwise, we'll be forced to stay in London forever and he'll just have to play cricket.

I am so far behind...

As you can tell, I am a little bit behind the power curve these days. I'd like to think it's because of the pregnancy but to be honest, I have been quite a lazy daisy. As you might have noticed, I posted an entry about finding out we're going to have a boy in June. I actually wrote it in April but it's taken this long to post. Well, I suppose in the grand scheme of things 2 months isn't that bad. Some of you are still waiting on Christmas cards from 2005. :)

I will try to get a little more motivation to update the blog more often in the upcoming months. We can't have you all forgetting about us over here. So what's been happening:

- Over our snowy Easter, we were thrilled to have our New Jersey neighbor, Kelly, come and visit us for almost 2 weeks. It was the most tourist-like we've been since we landed in London and it was fantastic. We went to Stonehenge, Bath to see the Roman Baths and eat a Sally Lunn bun, Camden Town, the London Bridge, the Tower of London, the London Eye and we even went Ghost Hunting in the center of LondonTown (nope, we didn't see any).



- We went back to the states to New York for a little refresher since the girls had 4 weeks off from school. It was nice but COLD! There wasn't much going on but we definitely made use of the strength of sterling compared to the dollar!
- We moved house in May. We are now in Chiswick which is a lovely place that feels like a village but is still very much in London. The house is awesome and we have some space to spread out and breathe.
- Sloane had her 3rd birthday on the 27th of May and was thrilled to find out that she did get the cake she wanted: one of Iggle Piggle. Iggle Piggle is a character in a TV show out here that has friends named Upsy Daisy, the Tomblyboo's, Macca Pacca and the Ninkie Nonks. Sounds ridiculous but she's infatuated and ate just about every bit of fondant on that cake. Despite the fact that it was an English style cake: they're usually incredibly dry with fake jam in the center and fondant icing that you can use to patch drywall, this one was actually really good.
- In early June, Matt took his first test for the CFA and is the only person in the world I know that would come home and say to me "I think I over-studied". Talk about opposites attracting! We haven't found out the results but will shortly and I'm positive it will be good news.
- Avery competed in her 2d Club Championship and did really well. She placed 2d in the range portion which has to do with flexibility and strength. This girl has lats like you wouldn't believe, biceps that are bigger than the boys in her class and abs to die for. She is such a little machine and she continues to love every minute of it.
- I am growing in size by the minute. As of today (26 June) I'm 29.5 weeks but feel like I've been preggers for an eternity. So far everything is going great and he's head down. Keep your fingers crossed that he stays that way (unlike Sloane) or else I will find myself with chiropractors, acupuncturists, hypnotists and priests. Anything to avoid the c-section.

Hmmm....what else. That's about it I guess. We're getting ready for summer and Avery's last days of school at her current school. She won't have much of a summer this year since her last day is 9 July and she starts her new school on the 21st of August. But we'll fill it fun nonetheless. Hopefully we'll get some good sunshine and be able to put up the pool in our back garden. So, until next time...

And it's going to be a....

BOY!

That's right folks...the London Dunker's are no longer going to be a sorority with a den daddy. We are actually going to have a B.O.Y.

The girls are over the moon and dad was almost beside himself. I have to say that I was in a bit of shock as well considering I just didn't believe that it was in the cards for us. I figured I had done something in a previous life to "blessed" with all girls that, no doubt, would be raging teen-wannabes at the ripe old age of say...8.

Alas, it is not to be. And thankfully so because the deal was, that if the sonogram showed another little girl, Matt could get a dog. A boy dog. I actually promised him two boy dogs just to try to even out the numbers a bit. I was starting to feel a bit guilty for all the estrogen despite the fact that it was all his fault from the git-go anyway!! We women are merely hosts and the guys really have no one to blame but themselves. :)

This was at only 19 weeks

You know you had a great weekend...

...when you can come home to a measly stocked refrigerator and see that the only thing in there, a 2 liter bottle of maple syrup, has completely drained itself of it's contents into every square inch of your tiny English fridge...and you don't even bat an eye. You simply grab a wash cloth and get to work.

About an hour later and an immaculately cleaned fridge, I figured that I had better keep chugging on the blog train and get something out there. So about the weekend we had. Simply fantastic.

Wells-Next-The-Sea at low tide

Here it is at high-tide.

Last week, Matt had briefly mentioned that he might take Monday off and perhaps make Friday a short day. Usually we'd think there'd be a few days off for disgusting long hours of television watching, PS3 playing, Wii sports challenges and of course, Avery's gymnastics practices. This time however, Avery had a day off from the gym as well so we were completely commitment-free. A first since we arrived in London, well almost.

We decided to pack up, take the girls out of school early on Friday and skip out of school on Monday and get ourselves the heck out of this city. We headed north to a place called Wells-Next-The-Sea which is in Norfolk. It didn't take too long to get there but I have to say most of the roads were meant to fit two bicycles side by side than automobiles. I think the upstate NY Amish would have a hard time with their horse and buggies navigating the twists and turns of some of those...let's just say...paths.

It was pretty cold and we were most definitely one of the few brave families out sight-seeing during this frigid weather. We simply didn't care and just really needed to get ourselves out of the city. We had no plan...just go. And we did.

We had a fantastic room at the top of an old Inn and the girls made themselves at home quite quickly. We decided to go exploring...thank you TomTom (sat nav)! We found a little cafe and had some tasty hot chocolate and learned from the Aussie baristo (is that what a dude behind the counter is or are they barista's too?) that the town has been deserted because it's not quite the season for "people like us" yet. It reminded us a bit of Alexandria Bay in January. Empty. We wanted to check out what the North Sea was like so we found a place that would take us out to go seal watching. The other places had canceled their trips due to high winds but luckily there was one place that wasn't deterred by the gusts and howls whipping through us as if we didn't exist. So off we went to find some seals and hopefully not freeze to death. Check out the shots below and you'll see that we did, in fact, survive and we had a blast despite the frigid temps and wind.

We even had the chance to do a little bird watching before boarding our tiny boat!

All aboard!!

Talk about getting up close and personal...we could have touched them!


Completely unaffected Sloane...freezing wind? Where???!!!

Of course, post seal experience we hit a pub and warmed ourselves by their fire and planned our next excursion. We thought it completely appropriate to hit a castle while we were out in the country and so we did some quick research and found Castle Rising Castle. How can one not be intrigued by a name like that? Come to find out, after we returned home, Castle Rising Castle is one of the most famous and supposedly most haunted castles in all of England. It's a 12th-century domestic keep, set amid huge defensive earthworks and is stunningly beautiful albeit completely creepy at times. In its time, Rising served as a hunting lodge, royal residence, and for a brief time in the 18th century even housed a mental patient. The most famous period in its history was when it came to the mother of Edward III, Queen Isabella, following her part in the murder of her husband Edward II. When you marry someone also known as the She-Wolf of France you're bound to be risking your life. I guess Edward II didn't see it that way. I won't even tell you the details of how he was supposedly killed... eck! (it had to do with a wood burning stove poker and a place on the body not usually seen by most).

Photo compliments of Castle Rising's on-line gallery

This is where the chapel was at one time.


Avery...not the mental patient. Although sometimes we do wonder...

Or are these the mental patients?



Part of the huge earthworks built to surround the castle making it almost impossible for intruders to pass.

What was next...ah yes. The North Sea. It only took the entire long weekend before we figured out why there was always a crowd of people and cars across the street from our lodge down a long dirt road. It was the easiest entrance to the beaches along the North Sea. Our trip would not be complete without a trip down the beach so we bundled up and off we went. It was a long, long, looooong cold walk but it was worth it. There is nothing like seeing our girls run with reckless abandon into the beginnings of the ocean and chase seagulls as they swoop through the mist. It was truly a day...a weekend...that we'll never forget.

THE DUNKERS ROCKED THE NORTH SEA!