• one activity in the morning, one in the afternoon (because more than that is too much)
• asked DNP what she might want to do before we left home, and in the process dropped some ideas which were deemed “boring”
• we saw our friends who live in the UK (friends with kids are great, but even better are cousins who bring candy and love well-behaved little girls!)
• we had an apartment so we could cook meals, or at least reheat meals, which was good because you can seriously spend like a billion dollars eating out in London.
• we stayed in a nice area, that was central to things we wanted to see
• between morning and afternoon activities we headed back to our apartment for a rest and sometimes lunch
• public transit is awesome as long as it isn’t a subway; subways are crowded, you end up doing a lot of walking to transfer, you run for trains, they are crowded, everyone is tall and grim-faced.  Buses are good, particularly when they are double-decker, but even when they aren’t, at least you can see where you’re going.

Here is our itinerary:

- Day 1 PM – we arrived mid-day, so in order to adjust to the time zone, we went out for a long walk.  We walked to two playgrounds!  One was really just accidentally on the way to another, which was our actual destination: the Princess Diana Memorial Playground which is fun and pirate-themed and so crowded!  It’s in one corner of Hyde Park, and in order to get there, we passed ice cream (yes!) and ducks and the Peter Pan statue.  We took the Tube back to our apartment, and stopped off and picked up some ready-meals at Waitrose to heat up.

Day 2 AM – Changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (the best view is from that round thingy in the center, but we weren’t there).  Even if we’d been there, it probably wouldn’t have been the most thrilling thing for a 7-year-old.  We had a snack in the park near the Palace that we’d brought with us, then headed to Hamley’s (the six-story toy store) where they do demonstrations;  toys are flying around everywhere, and there are huge lego sculptures.  If you’re from a big city this might not be as impressive as it was for us; they had every toy you can imagine, and pretty much every Playmobil set, which was exciting in itself.

Day 2 PM – Tea at Brown’s Hotel, which has a gluten-free tea that is amazing!  This is pretty expensive, but it was both lunch and dinner and we stuffed ourselves.

Day 3 AM – British Museum, which has kids’ activity backpacks with different themes that you can check out.  DNP did the Ancient Greek backpack which had about 7 activities including dressing up in a sort of toga, playing a game (a little bit like jacks) and using a magnet board to match shapes to a Greek temple (which is amazingly assembled inside the Museum).  We had lunch with a friend of David’s and his daughter in the Museum cafe.

Day 3 PM – Pedal boats and an ice cream (with a flake in it, of course) on the Serpentine in Hyde Park.  In the evening, the Irish cousins (who now live in London) came over, and DNP was occupied with Sarah who brought a diary with a little lock (big hit!) and sweets (including saucers which are too cool!)

Day 4 AM – Took a boat in the Thames from the waterfront past the London Eye all the way down to the Tower of London.  You can use your Oyster card for the boat ride, and it’s so cool!  The tour of the Tower of London was not a good idea because it was both boring and gruesome, so we bailed and toured ourselves.  The armor was everyone’s favorite part.

Day 4 PM – Went to the theater district and saw STOMP (got the tickets a few days earlier online) which was so much fun!  The perfect show because there was no complicated story line, nothing scary, lots of funny moments and it was just the right length.  And then we met our friend Garrett at a Vietnamese restaurant nearby in Soho called Pho.  Turned out to be an all-gluten-free restaurant so I could eat the EGG ROLL!  Yes!

The next day we headed off to other parts of England to see friends and family… but we can talk about that later.

Here is a list:

• sandwiches: egg salad, roast beef with horseradish and cress, chicken salad, cucumber and smoked salmon/cream cheese
• scones with cream and jam
• desserts – chocolate cup with blueberries, little cup of passionfruit stuff, small chocolate cake

They will bring more of whatever you’ve finished, so I had two rounds of sandwiches.  The sandwiches were amazing!  The scones weren’t my favorite, but the desserts were nice.

No, this was not dairy-free.  Yes: of course I ate the dairy!  Yum!  Worth it!

Anyway, like last year’s Princess Party I trolled the internet, bought some stuff, figured out a schedule, and it was a success!  It was, like the cake, home-made, and it looked home-made, and that’s ok.  The kids loved it, the parents loved it, and most importantly it was deemed a great party by DNP.

Here are the details

- note wall decorations $7, plates with musical notes on them, green balloons, green plastic tablecloths, cake (Trader Joe’s mix) with homemade chocolate chip icing and chocolate chips to make a musical note, pink lemonade, strawberries, cut up veggies and sour cream dip – about $50

Here is the schedule:

• Paint maracas and make kazoo cars while kids arrive – $33 (plus plastic plates with each kids name to put these while they dry)
• Head out to the yard to learn a routine to the Isley Brothers Shout! to perform for the parents later
• Inside for Name that Tune (David played each note on DNP’s keyboard that she uses to practice piano) – the last tune was Happy Birthday, at which point we brought out the cake and pink lemonade
• Cake and pink lemonade on a picnic blanket outside
• Karaoke (we bought this karaoke stand that works with an ipod) – it was also one of DNP’s presents – $60
• Freeze Dance with inflatable guitars (they got to take these home, too!) – $14
• Shout! routine as a surprise for the parents (which was an afterthought but was DNP’s favorite part)

Here are the hidden costs:

• tearing your hair out trying to help 12 kids glue pipe cleaner axles onto kazoo cars,
• time to work out a routine to Shout! even though you can barely dance,
• time to work out the notes to ten songs for Name that Tune
• last minute trip to Trader Joe’s because you don’t feel like making a cake from scratch
• daytime “date” with your husband to work out how to use the karaoke machine which turns into full-on karaoke
• time to make playlists: one for freezedance that you can play while you make instruments and eat cake and one for karaoke
• time to blow up guitars while you watch The Daily Show

You end up with four egg whites, so I made meringues, too, because, y’know I’m totally Martha Stewart like that.

And what could be worse for someone who is both gluten and dairy intolerant than an Italian restaurant?

Except that it was awesome!  I had read online that it was a good idea to tell your server about your allergy issues, so I did.  That is something I really hate doing, and I don’t know why, but that’s something to explore another time.  But I sucked it up and said “I can’t eat anything; I’m really difficult.” and the next thing you know the chef (who was actually from Italy) came out to help me order.

I ended up getting the Chicken Piccata which he made unbreaded.  And some corn pasta (which is my favorite) with unbelievable amounts of garlic and oil (yum).  See in the photo?  That is edible Italian food in a restaurant! (and the stuff that looks like cheese is lemon – I made David check because I thought it was parmesan).  I ate everything on my plate, which never happens to me, and definitely not at a chain.

And now I’m wishing we had a Maggiano’s in New Mexico, but I’m pretty sure we’re Olive Garden territory.  In other words: full of gluten and not very upscale.  So we’ll go back to Maggiano’s when we visit my parents.

Later: Udi’s.  Which is fine, but sometimes you want piping hot bread!

A few days ago: Searching through my regular blogs, I found this post, and for the first time it was a recipe that looked simple enough and yummy enough to make.  You can make all sorts of substitutions.  I used sprouted brown rice flour.

Now: BREAD!  Hot bread, right out of the oven.  Bread that is so good that I have to hide it because I’m afraid everyone in the house will eat the whole loaf.

One of my favorite Santa Fe traditions.  Follow Mary and Joseph and their band of musicians (no wise men, no sheep) around the Plaza.  At several intervals they sing for a room at the inn (in Spanish) and a devil appears in windows, on balconies and at portals and tells them to “Vayanse!” while spectators boo and hiss.  Finally they are allowed to stay at the courtyard at the Palace of the Governors and we all go inside to have hot cider and cookies (either chocolate chip or biscochitos) and we listen to a choir sing Christmas carols in Spanish.  (like Silent Night: noche de paz, noche de amor).  Then have your photo taken with un diablo and go home to dinner.

Que viva!!

I partly didn’t blog on it, because I overwore it.  Have you ever overworn anything?  Like to the point that you’re a little sick of it, but it’s still the main thing you wear because it’s just so useful.  It’s more like a uniform and less like something special that I knitted.

You know, I wore a uniform in high school.  If you went to high school with me, you wore a uniform, too.  I loved wearing a uniform because I never had to think about what I wore.  I’m still into that uniform thing.  If you went to high school with me, I’m curious to know if you thought the idea of a uniform was fab, too.  And are you still into that uniform thing?

Here is a bonus photo of me wearing the Basic Black Cardigan while ice skating in California, just to prove how often I wear it.  Look at the ridiculous expression on my face!  And doesn’t DNP look like a pro?