England Trip - Part 2

Visiting Gramps before Christmas - the first time Poppy met her great-grandpa. He loved meeting her.

At Beckworth with Nannie Sue.

I made the mistake of opening a Magnum bar in front of Poppy. She stole it!

...but she was nice enough to give me a bite here and there!

On Christmas Eve, we were able to go to the Milton Keynes shopping center with Grandpa, which had a carousel and winter village for children. Poppy loved it!

This was some kind of computerized star mat, and the stars would scatter wherever you walked on it.

The carousel! Poppy said "weeee!" the whole time, and each time we saw Daddy, she would wave and say, "hi!"

On Christmas Eve night, we spent some time with Vicky and Neil, and their son, Elliot. We were excited to meet Elliot for the first time - he and Poppy have the same birthday, but Elliot is a year older.

Elliot and Poppy

The Drewerys and the Leggetts

England Trip - Part 1

Well, here's our first pictures from our England trip, as of the Friday we arrived (the 17th - since the 16th was mostly traveling). There are about 7 posts on the trip, so that we could attach all the pictures. Enjoy!

Poppy & Anna's first pantomime on Friday afternoon: Jack and the Beanstalk. In the picture are: Anna, Poppy, Grandpa Dave, Sue, Elsa and Eve (Eve is Sue's daughter, & Elsa is her cute granddaughter).

Poppy enjoyed the singing and dancing, and playing on the chairs in the theatre even more.

Our first English dinner of the trip: roast & yorkshire pudding with potatoes and peas. Yum!

Paul and I were able to go to London for a day trip on Monday the 20th. We loved walking around with all the Christmas shoppers, even if it was cold & snowy!

Covent Garden

We got to see Les Mis again! The last time we saw it was in London 2003, when Paul and I were first dating.

The Wellingborough golf club. My favorite part of England: the huge, gorgeous old homes.

Doesn't it look like it belongs in Pride & Prejudice??

Grandpa VanDenBerghe

In Loving Memory

My wonderful grandfather passed away on December 15, 2010, from the effects of cancer. He will be sorely missed.
We were set to leave for England that day, so I knew that we would miss his funeral that weekend. Fortunately, because we knew that missing his funeral would be a possibility, we were able to visit him one last time the Sunday before he passed away. I was worried that he would either be asleep the whole time, or that he wouldn't recognize us even if he was awake, but he was completely lucid and talked to us about out trip, and about Poppy. The sweetest part was watching Poppy lean over and grab his hand to say goodbye to him before we left. I am so glad that I have some fond memories of my grandpa, and that he was able to meet Poppy and know her for a time, even if her memories of him will be very limited.
My grandpa was always one of my greatest supports, and one of the best examples for my siblings and myself. He instilled in me a desire to serve a mission, which I knew I would do long before the time grew near. I am also grateful that he was able to be our temple sealer when we got married in the temple, and that he was able to be at Poppy's blessing and get to know her some. And my best memory so far, and one of the things I am still most thankful for, was a blessing he gave me about 3 years ago. Paul and I had been left devastated after failed IVF, a doctor telling us we would never be able to conceive children naturally, a couple of invasive surgeries, and 3 miscarriages. It got to a point where I felt like I wasn't sure if we should give up, but didn't feel ready to consider adoption yet. We decided to get blessings from my grandpa because he was someone that I always looked up to most, spiritually. I had faith in him, and I wanted a priesthood blessing from him. I remember him telling me in the blessing that we would be blessed with children, and that it would be sooner rather than later. He told me that I would be healthy enough to do this, if I obeyed the Word of Wisdom, treated my body right, and listened to what my doctor told me to do. It was only a few months after that that I found out I was pregnant with Poppy, and was amazed when my doctor told me that everything looked great and that my hormone levels were normal. And now we have a beautiful, healthy, happy little 23-month-old! That experience restored my faith, and I will always remember what my grandpa has done for my family. I really miss him, but look forward to the day that we will meet again.

Thanksgiving and Family Pictures

It seems we've been lazy again, and haven't been keeping up on our blog like we should - which is hard, because then it's difficult to try and remember everything that's been going on in the past month or so. But then again, I suppose the blog is more of a journal for us anyway than it is for other peoples' reading pleasure.
So what have we been up to? Mainly, we've been trying to keep up with work and church stuff. Right now, Paul is filling in as Interim Director at CAP Utah because his boss is relocating to Denver, so he has been ridiculously busy and has even fit in a trip to Kansas City. As for myself, work is still the same, but I have been serving as the primary president at church, which is actually kind of a lot of work. Who knew? I guess anyone who has been a primary president.
Poppy has started doing really well in nursery and really likes it now, except for when certain boys start pulling her pigtails. She talks more and more, and can say all of her cousins' names, and repeats a lot of what Paul and I say now. It still melts our hearts when we ask for a kiss, and she plants one right on our lips. Which is one of those rare occasions where she actually does what we tell her to do. She can definitely be stubborn when she wants to be! The stubbornness is apparent in the photos -- she can pose and be a ham if she chooses to be, but if she is forced into taking a picture in the freezing cold at Daybreak (see above), she will definitely rebel!
We are preparing to visit England from December 15th to the 29th, and are very excited to be spending Christmas with Paul's family, which will be a first for Poppy and me. Poppy will be meeting some of Paul's family members for the first time, including her brand-new twin cousins, which will be so fun. We're still extremely nervous for the long plane rides, but if we can survive that, we can survive anything, right? We have our movies, toys, snacks and benadryl ready!
Thanksgiving was fun and we were able to spend it at my parents' house with all of my siblings and their kids, and my first-ever pumpkin pie turned out deliciously! All in all, the holidays so far have been very relaxing. Everyone in the family is doing well, except my Grandpa VanDenBerghe who has been in the hospital again and is very ill. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. I can't help but think about him right now, since tomorrow is Dutch Christmas. I have so many great memories with him and my Grandma, and Dutch Christmas was always one of the best times of the year for me. So, I really hope he gets better soon!
We wish all of our friends and family a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year!

Family pictures at Daybreak = really cold!

Getting started early!

Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma and Grandpa VanDenBerghe's house.

Our little baker.

Putting the star on the Christmas tree with Daddy.

Trunk or Treat! (and our last Halloween themed post)

So here are just a couple of pictures from the Trunk or Treat that we went to last Saturday (for those Brits reading this that do not know what a Trunk or Treat is, it's kind of like a car boot sale but instead of selling random junk you park up and give out candy as the kids go from car to car - it's basically an easy way to trick or treat that is perfect for little kids -like Pops- as it is earlier in the day and much less walking). Anyhoo we went along, handed out candy and Poppy filled up her bucket, the only downside was that it was pouring with rain, so we only stayed for about 15 minutes (just enough time to get lots of sweets) and headed home. Once the rain stopped Anna and Poppy went out and trick or treated our street, while I stayed home and answered the door approximately 650 times! Poppy got lots and lots of sweets, which is now sitting on the conference table at my work as Anna banished it from the house. We had such a fun Halloween, Poppy really seemed to enjoy it.

I know that all we talk about on this blog is Poppy, but seriously, she is such a funny, sweet, entertaining little girl. The latest developments are that she can say Edison (her cousins name, I guess Grandma was telling Edison to stop doing something yesterday and kept repeating his name). Poppy also can do head, shoulders, knees and toes. Although she pretty much just does head and skips right to the toes, where in fact she says shoes (but close enough). Also she is doing so much better in nursery, she stayed the whole time last week and seemed to have fun. Oh and one last thing the other night I had gone out and when I came back in she said "hi dada" it was the cutest thing. She is just so fun - we love her lots!

More Pictures of Our Favorite 20-month-old

Here are some cute pictures we took of Popsicle yesterday...

Trick-or-treating at my office - she loved it! She even walked down the halls saying, "Chick-O-Chee!"