Well, we are home and well recuperated from the English holiday. For the record, I would not recommend the earliest flight in from Stanstead as it means getting up in the middle of the night. Money is saved, but exhaustion is total.

Legoland was brilliant, but expensive. The small boy loved it! We went on lots of rides and he came home with a new Indiana Jones Lego piece to add to the collection. The London Zoo was excellent and the weather was picture perfect over the last weekend for it. There was a live animal show, a Bug House, gorillas, a butterfly habitat, a children's play/animal explore area, and all the usual suspects. We had a great time in London's parks; Holland Park had an excellent playground for bigger kids. We also caught Regent's Park, Greenwich Park, and Kensington Park. Kensington Park is the home of the Diana Memorial Park, which is the best kids park I have ever been in: a Peter Pan theme with a big pirate's ship sunk into sand, water features, tunnels, climbing, sand, swings, musical garden. It was a child's dream come true. Small Boy just stared in wonder and didn't know what to do first. Then he threw his shoes at me and ran for the ship. And it was FREE, enclosed, and people without kids can't get in and kids can't get out without parents. As an added bonus there were healthy kids meals served at the concession. To be honest, it was a lovely memorial to Diana and a bit of peace for parents in the summer. The kids just go play and come back when hungry. Why does Ireland not have lovely parks for kids???

The only disappointment was London Dungeons. We waited in line for an hour only to scare the pants off the small boy. It was just more appropriate for teenagers and a shame that they didn't state this on entry. Small boy kept saying "We are never going there again, Mommy!" Over and over til I felt truly guilty. To be honest, I could have skipped it, but I thought it was a fun way to do London history. Live and learn....In the picture of the two of us together in que at London Dungeons, the scar on my arm is all makeup. They were doing gory makeup for free and I got one; small boy was mortified as you can see from the pic.

Other than that, it was nice to spend time in the city. Small boy is a bit too independent and I had to keep pulling him back from his wandering ways. He asked me the first day "Why is everyone brown in London?" We were on Brick Lane in the Bangla/Pakistani/Indian area at the time and the comment was made in innocence, really. Kerry is still quite white and so I do want him to see that other parts of the world are much more diverse. I noticed that when he played on the playground, he never picked mates that were white, so maybe they do learn to be colourblind. Thank God.