Hot chocolate

There's a shop near the children's museum that we visited today that specializes in chocolate drinks. So we got a hot chocolate, a chocolate float (100% dark chocolate, melted, served with ice cream), and I got a toasted marshmallow shake. The outside of the cup was dipped in white chocolate.

We all enjoyed ourselves.

Trying out some names

For the past few days, we've been referring to the baby girl by one of our options for names. What is it, you ask? You'll have to wait to find out! Jane has a definite preference.

Jane is having a good time in school, despite having missed a few days already due to illness. We got her a scooter over the weekend to help get her to school a little more easily. Ideally. There are a lot of hills and she's new to scooters. Plus sometimes I actually can't keep up with her! She's doing really well on it, especially considering she just started doing it on Saturday.

A few weeks ago, Mrs. Kehrer invited us out to Portishead to visit and play at a park. (She is the mother of Andy's friend, who coincidentally lives 10 miles outside of Bristol.) Her niece picked us up and she took Jane and her son out on a pelican boat.

 Jane and Louie also got to ride some rides.

 We got the electric kettle as soon as we got here (for coffee with our French press) but we just got a teapot. It didn't take me long to get used to drinking tea at least once a day!

A Lego creation. Not sure if Jane or Andy made it.

I don't know the origins of this picture! But they look happy.

Jane's Little Sister

OK, I seriously don't know why the pictures are so difficult to drag and reorder. But at any rate, we are having another girl! We had another ultrasound last week, showing a good heart, correct number of digits, all that kind of stuff. I am particularly fond of my donut shirt.

Playing at the park

 Lounging at home

Andy took Jane bouldering. I stayed home, but she told me she did a great job and climbed high! It seemed like they had a good time, though Andy didn't get to do any climbing himself.

18 weeks and Jane's in school

Jane has been pretty consistent about wanting a brother. We'll find out next week either way. I am feeling plenty of kicks. Andy has felt one (though I warned him that could have just been the ice cream I'd just eaten).

Some days I feel like I look visibly pregnant. Usually when I'm wearing maternity jeans. But these are my regular jeans and I'll let you be the judge.

 Authentic Italian pasta, or Rachael Ray knockoff?

 I took this picture because we had to get rid of this wall hanging. It was particularly disappointing because we brought so few decorations with us, but it got infested with moths. It was made in Peru, though I didn't get it there. I grabbed it at a tag sale when I lived in Madison, WI. I'll miss it! But maybe now the moths will go away...

 We made a variation of chicken cordon bleu. Since Jane can't have traditional bread crumbs, we used gluten-free crisped rice cereal. I swear we crushed it first, but it looks as cereal-y as can be here.

Not pictured: the cheese sticks and onion pieces we fried in the leftover egg/cereal batter.

 What's that? How did Jane's first day of school go? Ask my poppyseed muffin with lemon curd and espresso.

 Jane getting her backpack on and stomping before leaving for her first day of school. Here, she is in Year 1, because she is five. We'll see where they'd like her to go when we're back in the States. Right now is she just five and is in the equivalent of first grade.

Walking in on the first day with Dad and Mom

 No kidding, we were right outside the school, and Jane asked, "Dad, how did the whole Earth form?" so we had to stop and answer that real quick.

 This will be her first full week of school. She is happy enough once we get moving but she is clearly tired because it's hard to get her up in the mornings. I can relate to that. (I have a lot of trouble finding a good sleeping position.) There have been no tears and she likes her teacher. She isn't always forthcoming with details of her day, so we have to take the snippets as she reveals them.

But we're all glad she's there!

There are often hot-air balloons in the sky here. We just saw another two this morning.

 We went out the other day in search of an armchair. Gloucester Road has a bunch of shops and we ended up getting quite a few things. And Jane spotted this friendly Lego police officer. We didn't buy it!

Birthday in Wales

Not the baby's, to be clear. Mine.

We rented a car and took a four-day trip to Wales. We stayed in Swansea and visited Three Cliffs Bay and Rhossili beach. We also stopped at Margam Castle (and park) on our way there.

Andy very bravely driving our rental car. He did great!

 Margam Park

 Inside Margam Castle

 And outside

 I think this was an abbey

 Jane has really gotten braver with her climbing lately. She never used to attempt the wobbly things like this.

 Jane took some pictures at dinner. This place had good pizzas--we all had one. Jane's was gluten-free, of course. They didn't score quite as highly in our book when our breakfast the next morning took two hours all told.

 Another Jane shot

 Ice cream with freshly-made chocolate sauce just for her!

 The bay near our hotel (on what turned out to be the nicest day weather-wise)

 Is this a full English breakfast, or a full Welsh breakfast?

 This place was kind enough to let us bring in our own cereal for Jane.

 Sand dune at Three Cliffs Bay. I told Jane about Sleeping Bear Dunes and that we'd go there someday.

 Beautiful cliffs

 Jane being Supergirl while I drink my Frappuccino

Apologies, but things always get messed up when I upload pictures from our two different phones, so we'll be jumping around a bit.

I missed the Welcome to Wales sign, so I snapped this instead.

 You may not know that blackberries grow all over the place in the UK. We paid for parking at Margam Park, but I think I earned our money back with berries.

 A carving that has drumming slats and is cool.

 Being silly

 Seriously. You guys can't imagine it.

 Jane driving a model boat around

 Peekaboo!

 Margam Castle (and my family) at the top of the steps.

 Selfie. Welsh-fie?

 Stopping along the water after dinner the first night

 Yarrrrr

 The rocks had netting on them and Andy said how sad it was that they had to keep the rocks restrained like that.

 I wonder how long these stay looking so vivid with all the rain. This was at Mumbles Pier

 Piratitude

 There was a staircase down to the beach at Mumbles Pier where we saw some cool tide pools.

 And I found a quartz smiley face.

 Affogatos for us and gelato for her. Unfortunately we think it had some gluten in it.

 Rhossili. There were cool tall grassy features (I'm sure Andy could tell you what they were called. Were they just cliffs?) and then a long path down to the beach. It was too windy to stay up high for long.

 A shipwreck, the Helvetia

 The less-windy, better beach day at Three Cliffs

 Jane would go get a single scoop of water and bring it back to her bucket (which got farther as the tide went out). Efficiency was not her concern.

 Good weather for flying the kite

 A bit of sunshine!

 Not the best shot. "More poetry is needed."

 Jane wearing my glasses

 Back home :)