We landed in London yesterday to celebrate our 10th anniversary a few weeks early. Here are a few pictures and memories from our first day (follow along throughout the next week if you’d like to see more 😊).

Life rushes by if you let it. This season of parenting little ones is intense and I often find myself longing for a pause button or a slower rhythm to our days — time enough to enjoy food and coffee hot, to consume a few pages of a book, to carry on a conversation about more than the logistics of the day.

Sometimes you have to get away for a minute, to breathe new air and catch your breath. That’s what this week in London is for us. We celebrate our marriage and the years we’ve shared with sleeping in and waking up slowly, walking hand in hand through places we’ve never been (isn’t that what all of marriage is?), savoring uninterrupted conversations and the time to really see and enjoy each other again outside the normal hustle of our everyday.

You can’t be on vacation forever. Soon, we’ll head home and back into the busy routine of life with work and littles. And I’ll be glad to be back, glad to have my babies in my arms, and glad all the more because we found the time to step away, recalibrate, and come back refreshed and ready for all the normal days that build our normal, beautiful lives.

KENSINGTON GARDENS //

I took about a million billion pictures of petals and flowers today. I never imagined London, a busy, bustling city, to be so brimming with life and color.

I’ll need an English rose garden of my own now, I think.

HYDE PARK //

We walked miles today, not just through Hyde Park but several others too. I simply couldn’t believe how many sprawling green spaces there are here. I’ve always been a country girl but how fun city life would be in a place like this with so much green throughout.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE //

THE STRAND //

We grabbed dinner on “The Strand”– enjoying each bite slowly and soaking up the conversation in between.

Goodnight for now. More adventures to be had tomorrow ❤

The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.

J.R.R. Tolkien