You guys! I am KID FREE! It is so exciting to know that I only have playtime for myself infront of me! The last couple of days with the kids have honestly been pretty rough. Ashley (the mom) had to work really late every night, so therefore I had to break for three days. I took the kids on a boat and they loved it, especially Jack being a little boy. We took the boat down to the Tower Bridge and walked across. I had a bit of a scare when Jack took off out of no where on the bridge...let me just say for the record I don't want to have kids for another like six years...ha...too many things that I want to experience by myself, and with my future husband. Here are some pics of the last days I had with the kids...

So that was the last day with the kids. It was a great time, but I am so excited to be by myself now! Chris the father flew in from the U.S on Thursday and booked another hotel for me in South Kensington area at the Sheraton Park Tower, I had no idea how amazing the hotel would be...take a look!

You all know how excited I get about the simple things in life, so when I get a awesome hotel like this for free you can imagine how excited I was!!

Today was my last day in London, I will really miss this city. The thing I will miss the most is how diverse it is. It is so easy to get around in London (in my opinion) with all the people speaking English, but at the same time you feel like you are emerged in 10 other cultures. What I love most about traveling is learing about other cultures, it is so interesting! London is the perfect place to feel comfortable, yet challenge yourself to step outside the box and experience other cultures. I wish Texas had more of that.

I leave for Scotland tomorrow morning, and it is so surreal that it is already here! The past month has gone by so fast, so I can't imagine how fast the next 10 days will go. I want to soak up every bit of traveling that I can...the food...the people..the lifestyle.

I am not sure how much I will be able to blog in the next few days with traveling around so much but I will try my hardest. Here is my itinerary so you all know what I am up to. I leave out tomorrow to Scotland by train at 9 am. I will be in Edinburgh for 2 days and then will fly to Munich for 2 days, then take a train to Paris for a day and a half. After Paris I take a train to Cornwall to visit family for 24 hours...whew...it will be such an adventure and I am so excited! I hope I get lost in the city's and learn how to get to where I need to be, I hope to mix and mingle with the crouds and make new friends, and I hope to have the time of my life.

I will post as soon as I can, and don't worry I will be taking tons of pictures!!

I love you all so much, thanks for following!

Cheers!

Hello my wonderful friends!!

Well I have finally been to Dover and am now safley back in London. The trip was so much fun, and I loved doing it by myself! The train ride to Dover was about 2 hours with all the stops inbetween, so for those two hours I was able to stare out into the English countryside, and have a good couple hours of journaling and getting some thoughts onto paper. Ahh...it felt good :-)

When I arrived Dover, I really had no idea where the castle was or where I was going....but about 5 min of walking on a random road I looked up and there it was. The castle sits on hill and the town is beneath it, so it is not hard at all to see the castle. It is such a long hike up the hill to the actual castle, but it was good because I hadn't gotten a workout in that day!


Since I really have only been in London, I have really only seen all the buildings and the industrial side of England. Venturing out to Dover gave me a good look at all the country side and all the quaint towns. I was amazed with how green everything was, especially when you got right on the coastline, the green hills contrasting with the background of the blue coast was breathtaking!

The castle was incredible to say the least. It makes me sad because some places you really just cannot explain it's beauty, you just have to be there. That is why I wish you were all with me, because my words to not do justice to how beautiful it was. Just think the total opposite of Texas, and you can imagine it. :-)













I wish I could say I had awesome weather while I was in Dover, but unfortunatly that was not the case. There was one point, thankfully I was done with the castle, that it was pouring and I mean like Texas thunderstorm rain. Because of the downpour I was unable to go to the top of the White Cliffs...I was so bummed. You all know how much I love doing stuff like hiking along the coastline and being able to wandered into unknown territory to just explore, and I did try but it was raining so hard and ontop of that was so cold! Oh well, it was still so beautiful!

It was pretty rewarding doing this little day trip by myself, like I said earlier it gave me some time to have some reflection of this whole trip and the exploration of faith. I know at the beginning of my journey over here it was pretty lonley and I was pretty discouraged. The last week for me has revealed a lot of areas of my life that I didn't know existed. I won't go into details, but I came to the realization that I will forever be sharing experiences like this with someone, and I am really looking forward to that, but right now being alone is more rewarding then anything I have ever experienced. The quest to come over here and find myself has been accomplished, and not only have I found who I am again, but also have found out how exactly to live my life to the fullest. I felt like I had been through the ringer the past couple months, with things ending and new things taking place, and I was lost in the mix of it all.

I read a good quote the other day by Donald Miller it said:

"I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently."

When I read that it spoke volumes to me and what I had been going through. Now that I feel as if I have my confidence back and have proved to myself that I can do things I didn't think I could, I want to continue on that path. Even though I feel more grounded in who I am, I still want to seek out new things. I figured out that the past year or so I had been pretty stagnant in life, and I think it took a trip like this to really put everything into perspective. I don't want to read the same page over and over again, I am excited to seek out the unknown territory because I know that it will produce awesome adventures to embark upon.

In his love-
Faithie

Yesterday Ashley had two cousins that flew into London for just a short time, Michael and Chris. They were both really sweet guys and we had fun while they were here! We went out to lunch all of us and the kids, and then stopped by Ashley's office just to check it out. Jack was so interested in the filing cabnet, so this is what we did to him....

I think I remember doing that when I had my last office job :-)

After we left the office me the kids and the guys went back to the hotel and they just crashed. I felt bad so I just stayed up and offered them my bed. They were about to have to leave out again for a 10 hour flight to Africa, they will be there for three weeks going to a couple of the World Cup games...I was so jealous! Jack of course just would not lay down for a nap, so I took them out for a walk and he ended up falling asleep after like 15 min.

Later on in the night I really wanted to get out, and have a little break fthe kids. So Jonathan had recommended this hostel to go to that had a really good pub atmosphere, so I finally went to check it out and it was so much fun! I got hit on by two drunk 70 year old men, it was really weird. So I think a couple of the younger guys felt sorry for me so they saved me with engaging in conversation. It turned out theywere good ol' Aussies, so we connected really well! Tyler challenged me to play a little pool with him, and I stepped up and actually beat him the first time! haha....then he came back and totally blasted me in round 2. It was a really fun night!

So yea that was the Steam Engine Hostel! It was tons of fun...so thanks Jonathan!

That pretty much wrapped up the day, I came home around 11 or so and got a great nights sleep!

Alright until tomorrow! Love yall!

G'Day!! Hope everyones week is going well! Half way through to the next weekend! Whaa hoo!!

Yesterday I woke up and saw that it was a beautiful day and decided to go the farthest I had gone with the kids, to the London Zoo. I was actually really excited about it because I LOVE zoo's...I'm such a kid. Half way through our journey to the zoo, Jack falls asleep which is horrible when traveling in the tub because so many times I have to take him out of the stroller for him to get out and climb up the stairs. We were almost to the zoo when he fell asleep and when I woke up him to go up the stairs he of course freaked out because he was tired. Some random guy helped me lift him and the stroller all the way up to the top of the stairs. Then when we finally made it outside it started to rain. The beautiful sunshine had gone away and storm clouds began to rumble. Ugh...but I was still determined to go to the zoo.

Long story short, zoo was fun but a bit overpriced like most of all the tourist stuff over here. Here are some pics of our journey...

He loved all of it!

Alright so the really fun time of that day was at night. I met up with Jake at Liverpool Street Train Station and we went to a pub, grabbed a drink and talked for a couple hours. Afterwards him and I met up with his friends from the past weekend and grabbed some AWESOME Indian food on Brick Lane. It is a famous part of London, known for the best Indian food. It was probably the best thing I've tasted in a long time. The funnest part about it all is that there are guys on the street trying to get you to come to their restaraunt. So you basically hagle your way and get a really awesome deal. Our deal was a appetizer, main dish, and two pints of Indian beer for 10.00 pounds....haha! So cheap!! We had a blast all together talking about the weekend and just soaking up good conversations. Ned, one of the friends we were eating with looked to his right and noticed a rat crawling up the stairs in the restaraunt. Eww...I had to really ignore it, Jake tried to keep my mind off it but I kept my eyes out for more! haha.

After dinner we all went back to one of our friends flat and hung out, talked, listened to music, and watched youtube all night! haha..I love simple nights full of conversation! I actually ended up staying there all night and didn't go to sleep at all! I left around 6 to go to work. Awesome night with awesome people makes for such a unforgetable evening.

I was so sad, because I forgot my camera that night! :-( So I didn't get any pictures of all the good times...ugh. I will not do that anymore!!

Alright people, I am going out to a Hostel tonight called the Steam Engine. I am really excited about hanging out with all the random travelers!! I WILL take my camera! :-)

Love and hugs to you all!

Hey followers!! :-) It has been such a long and fun weekend!! I will get right to it.

I walked over to Westminster Train station to head over to Brixton to begin helping out with shooting for Jake and all his film buddies. Oh and for all you guys that love the trains in London like I do here you go....hehe :-)

I love all the public transportation over here and wish we had more of it in Dallas!

Alright so I arrive in Brixton, and I have the directions to the flat that I am suppossed to be meeting everyone at. I turn right outside the train station which I thought was correct and bumped into Jake and his buddy Anthony. Yea I was totally headed the wrong direction but thankfully they were there to help me out....embarassing.

Jake and Anothony had to find a couple of supplies before they started filming so I was able to see the Brixton side of London, which was pretty much the same, but everything in London has character. We headed back to the flat to a large croud, which was very intimidating at first. Let's see if I can list all their names now. Ok there was Jake, Anthony, Frankie, Nadia, Nina, John, Tom, Gregg, Francis, Liem, David, Ned, Julia, and myself. Whew...I got them all I think :-) Anyway it was a little overwhelming at first but thankfully I had hung out with Jake before and could get to know people through him.

I am going to skip past a lot of details that went on most of the day, but let me just say I have such a better appreciation for people in the film business. It is such hard work, and so detail oriented to a crazy degree. All those people had their own passions and you saw it come alive when they all worked together, which was amazing and so fun to be apart of.

They were filming all the way from 1 to 7 nonstop, but then came the World Cup! We all had dinner sat around the tv, had a few drinks and cheered for our favorite team. There were 6 US people there and 6 Brits so it was the perfect combo for the game. It was so much fun....take a look :-)

Sad to say but that was all the pictures I took of watching the game, I felt bad to be flashing the camera everywhere when that was what they had been doing all day. You can kind of get the feel for how it was though....there was tons more people behind me. So much fun!

I stayed and hung out all day with everyone until late that night around 12 because I had to catch the tube before it closed.

The next morning I met up with Jake and we went to the 9:30 service at Holy Trinity Brompton, you all should really check out their website they are doing some amazing stuff here in London uniting believers everywhere. What they do that was really awesome to me is the take old abandoned cathedralls and churchs in London that will either get knocked down or sold to a bad cause, and they buy it and create a place for people to come and worhsip the Lord. Get it back to what the purpose was for that building. They are just now buying one that is in a bad area of London and really keying in on reaching out to the lost...so powerful! The service was awesome and so chill, just people coming together to worship.

After church me and Jake got on the train station and headed all the way up to North London. The train ride always go by faster when you have someone to talk to! haha...Oh yea I forgot to tell you I decided to come out another day and shoot with them! So Jake and I arrived in North London with the producer David waiting to pick us and some of the other actors up, in a teeny tiny van with no seats in the back. We all pilled in together like sardines...I snapped of picture of Jake and I cramed together haha...fun times.

haha...that picture makes me laugh!

We finally got to the set which was at a abandoned youth center, all the filming here in North London would be outside. I took a couple of pictures of Jake in action with his 7D camera...I was his assitant :-)

I actually got to be the clapper on the set! It was so much fun...but I totally forgot to take a picture of me in action...oh well here is more of everyone else!

This next shot is Julia and I, she was the make up artist...and she was AMAZING! and so sweet...

Here is Nina with the sound....poor girl was so frustrated with all of us!

So after we got done filming in this location we all pilled into Nina's car and drove all the way to South London to the flat again to film more. Jake was worried that I was bored the whole time, but it was so much fun!! I loved seeing all the behind the scenes action...plus all the people were so welcoming and awesome. These next two shots are in the flat in the the filming of a poker scene, the smoke machine went a little crazy sometimes.

Nadia, the one in the red pants cooked some awesome curry this night for dinner for us all!! So delish!

Being able to hang out with all of these very talented people was so amazing! I literally loved every second I was with them all. I love people with a certain passion, and going over a scene many many times and then finally getting it where it looks like perfection, brings out the passion they have for this. It was lovely to meet all of them!

Ok, that's it for now...this is getting too long and I am sure I have lost most of you by this point. :-) Love you all...talk soon!

Faithie

Oh my goodness guys, I am so ready for the weekend! Most excited for the World Cup, and seeing London at it's funnest time! The Queen's Birthday is tomorrow as well, and I am going to try and go see that! I know there will be millions of people so it might not even be worth it, we will see how it goes.

This whole week has been pretty rainy, but it is supposed to be perfect this weekend! :-) Last night I had made plans with Simon to go to church with him and meet some of his friends at the pub, but I ended up having to work until 10:30 so it didn't work out. I was so bummed because he said that it was one of the best services they have had in a while! Ugh..oh well. I am still planning on hanging out with Jake and all of his friends on the set of their new film most of the day tomorrow, and then we are all going to watch the World Cup together! So excited!!

I love meeting new faces all over the world, each and everyone has their own story and I love to hear about them.

I had a pretty amazing burger last night, I have been having fish and chips almost everyday so I needed some American food: mmmm

Today it is raining, but it stopped for a little while so we got out to the park. Jack is so scared of all the pigeons, and since they are everywhere in London these kind of freak outs are pretty common :

He thinks they are going to eat him is what I was trying to get him to say, because he really thinks they are going to.

Well tonight I think I am going to go to Oxford Circus area and just wander around, maybe do some shopping! After I think I might meet up with Ashley and have a drink or something. It is really nice that me and her connect so well, it would be horrible if it didn't but I feel as if we are almost sister like!

Sorry the past couple blogs have been so boring! This weekend will produce tons of pictures with new faces and new experiences! AHH! I'm so excited! :-)

Next weekend I am planning on taking a weekend trip out to Dover, and then the weekend after I'm off to Scotland!! Whoo Hoo!!

Cheers!

So I have heard that people are going crazy that I have not posted in a couple days...I am flattered..so here you guys go!

So I have to back up to Monday night when I was so awesomely blessed with meeting two wonderful people to share a fun night in London with. Thanks to Jonathan my brother I was able to connect to one of his friends from Austin, Jake and he brought along another guy Simon. Conversation flowed and it was great to have the fun pub atmosphere in London. Jonathan's friend Jake is in the film business, and he invited me to go on set with his next film! I think it will be a awesome experience and I am so excited to see it all happen! Plus we are all having a World Cup party afterwards with a bunch of people from the set. :-)

Tuesday...Me and the kids went to the aquarium. It was a bit overpriced but the kids enjoyed it! Here are some pics!

The pictures sucked in the aquarium becuase they wouldn't allow a flash. So that is all for the aquarium.

Today we went to the Natural History Museum. It was the first time on the tube with the kids...pretty difficult to say the least but was a fun experience. Jack LOVED the trains, and I loved to see him smile. Everyone was very helpful, and we were the center of attention.

That has really been it for the past two days, we have had rain so we did things inside.

I am so excited for the world cup this weekend! So there will be fun pictures in the future!! Stay tuned...

I miss you all so much!!

Good Afternoon all! I have had a great day with a fun discovery but I did have a little bad news and was not able to go to church, I couldn't find it!! Anyway it's a long story but I will make sure I can go either sometime this week or possbily just next Sunday. At least this has been the only time I have gotten lost though!

My fun discovery was a place called Temple Church. My dad had mentioned it to me and said that he had never been because it was pretty hard to get to, but he had always wanted to go. So I went for him, but I ended up enjoying it a lot! The Temple Church is one of the oldest and beautiful churches in London. The Church was built by the Knights Templar, the order of crusading monks founded to protect pilgrims on their way to and from Jerusalem in the 12th century. The Church is in two parts. The Round and the Chancel. The Round Church was consecrated in 1185 by the patriarch of Jerusalem. It was designed to recall the holiest place in the Crusaders' world. The circular Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The tombs of the Knights are are still in the Round Church. Here are some beautiful pictures....

It was really an amazing church, and I think what I liked most about it was it was not very many tourists there like me...haha. I only say that becuase sometimes when there are so many people around you are distracted by them instead of the beauty of the church. There were maybe 3 people there the whole time.

Also a cool thing that happened was I was talking to the main minister at the church to see if they had any more services that day and he told me that they had already had them, anyway so I was leaving the church and there was this little plaque outside that gave the name of the minister and then who he was and what he did. Come to find out he is one of the main ministers that speaks directly to the Queen! After I saw that I went back in and asked him and he said yes, then I tried to take a picture with him (so much for the lack of tourists...lol) and he said that he couldn't. But I was so excited that I got to meet and talk to someone who speaks directly to the Queen of England! Ok here are some more pictures!

I loved the Stain Glass Windows...they were incredible

This was the garden of outside the Temple Church....so peacful

I was really upset that I couldn't find my church this morning, and it was becuase I thought I was going on one street but I remembered they have two different locations and the 4 oclock service was at another location, so I was scrambling to find it and couldn't. :-(

Anyway I will do it again soon, but on my walk back to my hotel I began to think of how much I was craving worship. I came home and decided to have my own time with the Lord and I put on a song by Kari Jobe called Sanctuary. I thought about the beautiful church that I was at this afternoon, and I thought about why I loved it so much and it was because it seemed like it was hidden away. There are many beautiful churches here in London but many are populated with crouds and are on every tourist map out there, with the Temple Church you had to dig to find it.

There is a part in this song Sanctuary that says: Sanctuary, Pure and Holy, in a Secret Place I will find you there. When I went to this Temple Church today, I felt like I had found a hidden treasure and I began to think about the Secret Place that we can come to and meet with the Lord, and how much more he can move in us when we meet him in a secret place of brokeness. Today my secret place with him was in the Park Plaza Hotel in London, England. It doesn't have to be in a beautiful cathedral, it can be wherever you want it to be as long as you are humble. To be washed with the Lord's prescence was exactly what I needed. I feel renewed after meeting him in my own Secret Place.

I love you guys!