the Queen’s birthday, an interesting bike parade, and a whole lotta girls

Then made a plan…

…and headed to Buckingham palace to battle the crowds to see the Queen, along the most beautiful and picturesque London backdrops.

Dave helped the girls get all perched and ready for the royal sighting.

I love that man.

Then along came Prince William and Kate (Kate is in the carriage, not sure where William was, but someone said he was riding a horse).

Excitement back in the peanut gallery:

Then came the Queen…dressed in bright lime-green and waving at us all:

It was pretty exhilarating to be there amidst that throng of people, joining in with the awe and respect of the British Royalty.

They were on their way to Buckingham Palace where they made a royal appearance on the balcony to watch the fly-by.  We didn’t see them on the balcony but here’s a pic. from BBC:

After they had gone through they opened the main boulevard.

It was pretty funny because as we gathered amidst all those people to watch the plane fly-by coming up next, we ran into SO many people we knew.

First of all, we randomly ran into Steve Young and his family. We knew Steve (he helped a little bit with my Dad’s run for Governor way back eons ago) but we hadn’t met his family so it was fun to meet them, they are awesome.  Steve’s brother is in our ward and another brother lives close-by who’s wife helped SO MUCH when we built our house…we love the Youngs!

It is such a small world.

Then we met up with Sophia’s whole family who we hadn’t been able to find in the crowd before (we were so excited to meet them since they had so graciously taken care of Elle as she adjusted to England last year.

Then along came a few girls who are on study abroad there in London, two of whom we knew separately before they came here (one is a good friend of Max’s from BYU who came down for his farewell and another is a good friend of our good friend who we got to know at Lake Powell last year).  So fun that they are now dear friends and brought along some other girls for us to meet too.  What a grand time they are having there!

So there we stood, surrounded by people we know and love in the middle of London at the Queen’s birthday.

We were all chatting away a hundred miles a minute when the fly-by started.

It was beautiful.

Plane after plane soaring right over our heads.

And the last ones left a trail of red-white-and-blue filling up the sky.

…all as proper and wonderful as you would expect in London.

Right on cue, it started to rain as soon as the festivities were over.

We took cover in a local “Pret” (such a great little bakery), and said goodbye to these lovely ladies who had to take off:

 Love them and especially this one so much!

So many memories over the years!

And as they left, we met up with another family we love and adore (this was a planned meeting this time:)

So, Sophia’s family was with us (who have one boy who is on a mission and four girls just like we do), and we fell head-over-heels in love with them.  She (the mom) is from Greece and he’s from England and they are about the kindest, sweetest people you could meet. They will always have such a special spot in my heart for taking Elle (who they didn’t even know) under their wing without batting and eye and making her feel so at home in London last year.

Amy and Rob’s family joined us too, who also have FOUR girls.  (so you see a pattern here…there’s still another four-girl family coming up in England…)

Amy has been the best of friends with my little sister Saydi ever since I can remember (which means we have claimed her as part of our family) and she and her husband have lived right outside London for a lot of years (I can’t remember how many) and we ADORE them.

Rob was the one who hooked us up with the lady who Elle did her design internship for last summer.  So we are forever in their debt.

It was so fun to have all these girls all in one spot.

…right there in Chinatown.

Here are the parents of that gaggle of girls:

They all made such fast friends.

The Deightons (Sophia’s family) had to leave by then, so we bid them farewell, and set off on our next adventure with Amy and Rob and their girls.

Much to our surprise, as Rob was helping us make our way to this monument below, along came a naked bike parade:

I’m not just talking just a few naked bikers, I’m talking hundreds and hundreds of them.

They simply just kept coming!  And they were right everywhere in the direction we were going.

I have to admit, our eight girls’ expressions cracked us all up.

Too bad I didn’t capture them (the expressions, I mean :), but here’s our selfie.  Because seriously, when you happen to run into hundreds of naked bikers it must be documented somehow.  HA!

From there we headed to Harrods and talked and talked along the way.

 Lucy was in Heaven in the Lego friend section.

 Grumpy tourist, not so much 🙂