Pictures Galore

I realized that I have totally neglected my Shutterfly share site the past several months, so I went on today to add a bunch of my pics from the past few months of trips!! So if you are interested in seeing ALL of the pics from any of my trips there up there for you!

lwaterfield.shutterfly.com

Happy Birthday Hayden Claire!

Happy birthday sweet Hayden!! I cannot believe that you are two years old today, time has flown by so fast, I'm sure your mom feels that even more!  I am so sorry I can't be there to celebrate with you today at your Elmo birthday party, I know last year I promised that I wouldn't miss your birthday this year, but your mom had to go and turn 30 this year, so I thought it would be good to surprise her earlier this summer.  I am so glad I got a chance to give you your presents early and watch you open them!  I love you so much and I can't wait to see you in a few short weeks when you will become a big sister!!  Love you lots!

Love, 

LaLa

I knew it!

I'm hooked...just finished the 2nd Harry Potter book and I am loving it!! I can't wait to finish them all so I can start watching the movies! I don't want to watch any of the movies until after I finish all of the books so I can preserve my mental picture of Hogwarts and the characters and continue to use my imagination! Although, with this 6th movie out I keep having to plug my ears at work as all of my co-workers like to talk about it! AND yesterday someone on Facebook posted a TOTAL spoiler in their status update, I was so angry, why would anyone do that!?!? I read the first couple of words then shut my laptop immediately so I didn't get the whole thing, but I got the jist of it...ugh! So no spoilers please :)

Cafe Sol...Where the Heart Is

Last night Kelly and I had girls night to catch up on all of the things we have missed in the last couple of weeks while she was visiting her family in the states. We went and got manis & pedis and then went to Cafe Sol, our old standby down in Clapham. When I lived in Clapham Kelly and I were regulars at Cafe Sol. It calls itself a Mexican restaurant, but I know differently so I always just get the Beer Chili. Poor Kelly has never been to Texas so she actually thinks that this is what real Mexican food tastes like and loves their Chimichangas...oh how I long for the day that Kelly can make it to Texas and I can show her what REAL Mexican food is all about! Anyhow it is one of our favorites, we have shared many long, hilarious conversations over chimichangas and chili at this place! Now it has even more significance in our friendship because last night at dinner Kelly asked me to be a BRIDESMAID at her wedding!!! I am so exciting about this and I can't wait to get started with the planning!! Kelly is such a special friend, we seriously knew that first day we met for lunch just one year ago that we would be in each others lives for the rest of lives. It is so rare that you find a friend as special as that and I am so thankful that I have found Kelly!

Kelly made the shirt...how cute!!! At first I didn't see the back and I was like, "what a fantastic black shirt...thanks kelly :)" She promptly told me to turn it over!

Be Very Afraid

I myself am quite scared of what is to come! So, it is no secret that I am a Twilight fanatic. Yes, I know it is shameful, I am a grown woman, but I just can't help myself. Trust me, if I could, I would. The funny thing is that I was so anti-Twilight before I read them as I have discussed in previous posts. I am historically anti all things fantasy, vampire, tween, cult, etc. But since I LOVED Twilight so much and they have been compared so much to the Harry Potter books (which I obviously didn't read...fantasy, tween, cultish) I have decided to bite the bullet and read Harry Potter. Now, when I decide to do something, I do it whole heartily...see what arrived on my doorstep yesterday from my friends at Amazon.

That's right, the entire Harry Potter Box set. I started reading the first one this morning on the tube, I am only 20 pages in and I am already loving it! I am very worried what this might mean to my social life in the coming weeks. Judging from Twilight I am doomed to locking myself away in my flat and turning my phone off and reading late into the night...hopefully I won't be AS fanatical about it. I have decided to read all of the books and then start watching the movies. I have never seen any of the movies so I am excited that I get to create the whole thing in my imagination first! I'm only about 10 years late on this train!

Busy Bee

I had such a fun weekend this past week and the rest of this week has been great so far as well. Friday night I went to dinner with some friends to welcome Christine back from a 2 month stint in the States. She and Robbie got married a couple of weeks ago in Seaside, Florida but Christine went back several weeks early to get everything ready for the wedding. I was so sad I wasn't able to make it but from the pictures it look GORGEOUS and like they had an absolute BLAST! The whole wedding ended up in the pool by the end of the reception! Anyways, we went to this great tapas place is Soho called Saltyard. It was delicious!! And my opinion can be trusted since I just got back from Spain :) After dinner we went down the street to the Charlotte Street Hotel for some drinks in their bar. It was such a cool place, we had a really fun evening and it is great to have Christine back in London!

Saturday I was pretty lazy and hung around my flat for most of the day, after lunch I was bored so I decided to walk over to the movie theatre in my neighborhood and see Bruno. This movie was TERRIBLE! Seriously, don't waste your money, I didn't laugh ONCE. Not even a little chuckle. I was horrified and I'm sure I had a horrible look on my face throughout the entire thing. I loved Borat, so it's not like this type of humor is lost on me, this movie was just that bad. They were totally trying to way to hard for the laugh and it wasn't funny...it was just offensive for the most part. Anyways, don't see it and if you do, don't say I didn't warn you! Later that night I met up with Annie and some other friends to go to Kensington Roof Gardens which is a super fun club that has a fantastic roof top terrace. Unfortunately, it poured rain all night long so we were stuck inside for the majority of the night and it was HOT inside that club. But we danced all night long and had a blast! Oh, and by the way I am not drinking at all for the month of July and so far it is going really well. Surprisingly, I don't miss booze nearly as much as I thought I would. I thought it would be especially hard not to drink at a club, but I actually had just as much fun and I felt great the next day! The next morning Annie and I went to brunch at this great restaurant in Shoreditch called Albion. It is so cute and very tasty. They sell fresh veggies, fruit, pastries, etc in the front of the store and the rest is a restaurant. After breakfast we rented The Wrestler and laid on Annie's couch for the majority of the day! The Wrestler was ok, but I was hiding behind my pillow screaming for most of it...I don't do well with blood or watching people hurt themselves or other people so I was not a fan of the part where he and that freak hillbilly were stapling each other and wrestling in barbed wire...ICK!

How cute is it that they sell fresh veggies!

Monday night I met up with Christine and Francis again for dinner for a better chance to really catch up. We went to my new favorite restaurant in Soho called Inamo. It is so much fun!! Anyone who comes and visits can expect to visit the place! They have these awesome touch screen computerized tabletops where you can view your menu (with pictures) order all of your drinks and food, change your background like a decorated table cloth and even play battleship against your fellow dining partners! It also has great food, it is Pan-Asian, so they have a little bit of everything. I had the Cinnamon Chicken, which sounds really weird, but was actually one of the best things I've eaten in a long time.


Last night I got to see my dear sweet Kelly who is back from 10 days in the states!! I missed her so much so it was great to get to see her. We met up with her friend Jen who is getting married in two weeks in her native Sweden. Jen wanted to get all of her girls together for a fun night before she heads off to get betrothed so we had a fabulous dinner at Bistro1 and then went to Karaoke Box for some hilarious fun! This was my first time to ever do Karaoke and I actually had a REALLY fun time...even with NO alcohol, which I always thought if someone actually convinced me to do Karaoke it would be b/c of highly impaired judgement! I haven't sung in front of anyone since I auditioned for the 5th grade talent show and sang Garth Brooks "The Dance" and Mrs. Johnson told me to start over and sing in my real voice. I was crushed! They do karaoke a little different over here, you aren't in front of an entire bar instead you actually rent these tiny rooms just for your group. You get your own karaoke machine and you just belt it out in your little soundproof(ish) room, so fun and less to be embarrassed about as you are among friends!

LOVE karaoke...we has SO much fun!


My and my Kelly reunited!!!

As you can see I've had a jam-packed last few days and it is starting to catch up with me. I'm just going to the gym and staying in tonight to catch up on some rest. But I have another full weekend ahead so I'll keep you guys updated!

***I'm posting lots of links to the places I went since I have been SO bad at taking pictures lately. My small camera I take with me everywhere is on its way to the graveyard unfortunately! That will be my THIRD digital camera to bite the dust, I need to be a little more careful with these things!

Isn't It Ironic...dontcha think

I find it quite ironic to celebrate my countries independance in the country we fought and won our independance from...but none the less, the show must go on! The UK Texas Exes had a picnic in Regents Park on Saturday with several other University Alum groups in London. Not the A&M Alum group I might add, why you ask...because they don't do anything! I have been less than pleased with the Aggie alum group here, they hardly ever do anything, so I have been adopted into the UK Texas Exes as they have lots of fun events to go to! It was actually at the Texas/OU watching party last year that I ran into Annie! I digress, back to the picnic...we had TONS of american food (I made yummy corn dog muffins!), great weather, tons of people, etc. We stayed out at the party playing frisbee, throwing the football and drinking warm wine (ugh!) until the sun went down around 10 pm. That's right people, 10 pm, don't be too jealous the sun sets around 4 pm for about 7 months of the year! All and all it was a successful (much more so than last year when I had only been here 3 days!) 4th of July celebration. It only lacked fireworks! Although I miss spending the 4th out at the lake or floating down the Guadalupe!

Wimbledon

This post is a little delayed, but last week Annie and I went out to try and catch a game at Wimbledon after work. We headed out to the tennis grounds around 4 pm expecting to have to wait in the queue (English word for line) for a couple of hours just to get into the grounds. Well lucky us, there was no line at all!! We just walked right up, paid our 5 pounds to get in and there we were! So what they do at Wimbledon, is have a ticket resale booth. As people leave matches early they have to turn in their tickets for their seats then people that show up on the day of with no tickets can buy these seats. When we showed up the Roddick/Hewitt match was playing on Court No. 1, the line at the ticket resale booth was really long so we decided to go join the rest of the crowd on Henman Hill and watch the game on the big screen. This actually turned out to be really fun. They have this huge hill outside of Court No. 1 called Henman Hill (named after some English tennis player) there is a HUGE big screen set up so everyone parks it on the hill and watches the match. It is fun b/c you can bring food in and picnic, plus you can buy Pimms and Strawberries and Cream, etc from all of the vendors on the grounds.

Me and Annie on Henman Hill

The view from the hill

Our Texas boy!

Me and my Pimm's!

Yay, Roddick won!! Too bad he couldn't win the whole thing!

On the way out we saw John McEnroe on top of the BBC Media center set up for commentary!!

This Time a Year Ago...

I was being dropped off from the aiport in front of my new flat to begin this adventure! I truely cannot believe that a year has gone by since I moved here. It has gone faster than I would have ever imagined. It is a weird feeling, when I am back home it feels like I never left but I am also so comfortable and happy here in London. I never really thought I would have made so many friends so quickly here in London, and not only friends...but some friends that I know I will have for life. I am so happy with the last year, the friends I have made, the friendships I have been able to continue from a distance, the places I have travelled (9 countries to be exact!) and the things I have done! Here's to another year, I can only hope it is as good as the last!