2005

We spent another day in the beautiful city of York, England.  I can't tell you how much I love this city and how much I will miss it when we are gone.  One reason for how much I love this city is this...

That, in the background, is the York Minster, which I have talked so much about.  And again today, the bells were chiming the whole time we walked around the city.

It was a great day.  We started out at the Jorvik Viking Centre.  Before 1000 AD, the city of York was a Viking city.  In the early 1980's archaeologists excavated over 40,000 artifacts that belonged to the Vikings.  Also whole parts of cities were preserved under the streets of York.  All of this is preserved in this underground museum.  They have digitally scanned the skeletal remains and then matched them to modern people that have similar features and made models of what they think the Vikings looked like and then made a model city that you are taken through in "time machines".

After the "time machine" tour there were a lot of hands on things for the kids to do.  They got to do pencil rubbings of Viking patterns and dress up like Vikings.

They also got to write their names in Viking letters with stamps.  After that we looked at more artifacts and learned a lot about bones and skeletons.  This will count as a field trip for the girls since they learned a lot yesterday.

We spent last night at our next door neighbor's house singing karaoke, doing the limbo and dancing.  The kids each sang us a song and EVERYONE including Danijela stayed up past midnight.  To welcome in the New Year we had champagne (fake for the kids), 12 grapes (you make a wish on each grape for the New Year), and the girls ran around the neighborhood yelling "Happy New Year".  Then we brought them home to bed. 

We all had to get up early to see off David's parents.  The kids were sad to see them go, but were so tired that they were asleep within minutes after David left with his parents.

Today we have spent watching movies and resting.  Here is our last family picture of 2004.  Taken in York yesterday.