The week flew by. Nothing too memorable as we focused on keeping our daily routines and making up for unbridled gluttony over the weekend. Now most of the cherry trees are in bloom and we got some daffodils at the market. Almost forgot. Kingston university was having another round of graduations throughout the week. Happy grads with parents were everywhere. On Thursday we went to Nastya downstairs. Had a good time, kids too. 
On Saturday we went to Oxford. We last visited it in September with my parents. Compared to Cambridge it seems stuffier and closed in. There are some pretty streets but most of the interesting things are behind the walls of colleges. Most are closed for access, others require fee for a walk around the quads. We followed behind a student and snuck onto the New College campus. The short walk around the cloister and the wall surrounding the campus was nice, but it still felt we are missing on some other, more important secret. Other places were the same: Radcliffe Camera "For Registered Readers Only," Bodlean Library: "Little Kids Not Allowed." The last one is just bewildering. 
What we really loved was the visit to Ashmolean museum. Its collection is second only to the British museum. We started at our favorite Egypt/Greece section.. and then covered some European bronzes, Coates Bestiary and other things. The museum is smaller and better designed for children with lots of interesting interactive exhibits, but artifacts are none less impressive for it. 
We also found a two pound book store and spent some quality time in it. Seriously every book just 2 pounds. And there were new adult and children's books. We need to find more of these locally!
When we returned home we had dinner at the Vietnamese Kostik found earlier in the fall. Dan called him to check on what we should get. Globalization is great! 
I thought that kids were ripe for watching the Mummy and occasion had called for it. But it is a pretty scary movie and kids decided that they've had enough half way into it. Good choice. We finished it off at night and it does have some scary moments. 
On Sunday we went Ice-skating to Guildford Leisure Center. Alas we missed ice-skating right in our backyard - there was a rink in front of Hampton Court Palace since November, and they just took it down a few weeks ago. Based on the quantity of ice skating rinks around Olympic champions in this sport are probably hard to come by in this country. 
I don't know why more of such centers are not built, just like our local one that only has a pool, this one was teeming with people. Fortunately most people were there to go to the pool. However once we got on the ice more and more people had shown up until it became a slow-moving mass consisting predominantly of toddlers and their parents. Georgia was very happy though. She was asking to go ice-skating for a long time. Isabella was not very comfortable but she did good considering it was her first time on ice. At one point she got so comfortable that I let her go on her own, she promptly fell, got hold of my hand and on we went.
Back home we did our weekly shopping and then kids caught up on their homeworks.. and we relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. We are going to get a lot of visitors in the spring. Hurray!!
Isabella had a few nightly accidents recently; I got her a set of bed pads to make clean up easer. As WebMD and a few other sources has suggested we explained that this stuff happens, not a big deal, and if it happens again, just call us and we will replace the pad... So what does she do right after we say good night and leave... yep. parent alarm does work :)
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