Big Dreams and Easter Vacations

Be careful what you wish for, cause you just might get it all... For some reason, this phrase always makes me think of winning the lottery, so no, we did not win the UK lottery. In fact last time we played (we do it once a month just because of the old joke about the guy who dies and when he reaches heaven goes to God and says - why did I never win the lottery? and God says - because you never played...) we had exactly 0 correct numbers... So yes, no lottery winnings for us, but anyway I was trying to start a whole different post.
One of the things I discovered over the past couple of years is that realizing your dreams and living in them are two very different things. Usually you don't really think about it do you? You have a dream and you try really hard to realize it, thinking that thing, the fulfilment of that particular dream will change your life forever, for the better. But it doesn't end there, because say you did it - you realized your dream. Now what? Well, here is the kicker - you now have to go on living with it, after it, in it, however you want to look at it.
I'm guessing by now you know me a little bit, and you know I don't do well with unrealized dreams. I have a sever aversion to what ifs, to the road not taken, to giving up. So I try to make each and everyone of my big life-changing dreams come true. To this day I only have 2 I still have done nothing with - I have not lived in San Francisco and I have not opened a bakery (though I did have a baking business in Gibraltar). Oh yeah, when I was about 20 I wanted to someday be up the corporate ladder, but I reckon if I go to SF, I can always take a ladder to Google headquarters and climb it :)
Over the last year we made some big changes and realized some dreams. Small stuff like, you know, moving to London. It's not like we've been dreaming about doing that for about 8 years. Noooo. The thing is, there is a difference between the moment you sit down with a bottle of wine and some chocolate and tell yourself - "yeah baby, we've done it" and the actuality of living here. A moment that has yet to come now that I think about it. It's important to stop and enjoy your moment, right? When asked I always say yes, sure, enjoying your victories is important. Take at least as long as you would had you failed. But we didn't, couldn't, and now maybe it's too late because now we have to deal with the reality of this dream, of living here and sometimes, well sometimes, it's not all it's cracked up to be. Because some of the reality of living in London is that it's more for the "young professionals" or the "young at heart" or anyone who doesn't have an 8 years old and a 4 years old boys that needs recreational activities. I know what you are going to say - it's you, so stop blaming London. Maybe it is, I don't know anymore, I do know that it feels kind of weird complaining about London - how can we? How can we complain about living in London? and especially after all the years we've dreamt of coming here? but somehow we found ourselves with the realisation that it's April, it's a week into Easter, and in the last 3 months we had one day of outside-the-house-real-London-day-of-fun, and we really can't see it changing any time soon. We found ourselves sitting around last week thinking that, hey, we expected more. We expected a never ending stream of opportunities, of things to do. We expected it to be LONDON, and not "just" London.

So we searched and scoured the globe in order to find fun things to do in order to save Easter and London from total ruination -
When my friend was still here we took the kids to Covent Garden to see the Easter Eggs and Easter Bunnies scattered around, and of course eat some chocolate muffin. Yon can't leave the house without his beloved Starbucks chocolate muffin.

 

Hidai and Ron went to watch an Arsenal match for Hidai's birthday and because we found one we were quite certain the team will win...

Then we took them to Ripley's Believe It Or Not, because my friend wanted to go and we've never been. I didn't really know what to expect, but I found that I am not a fan of the whole 2 headed 3 legged animals and weird looking people. Everyone enjoyed the mazes - mirrors and lasers. All in all a good day out, which was finished with McDonald's and 2 very tired kids.

 
We had a visit from the Easter Bunny that the kids waited and waited and waited for, but when the morning came it took them about 3 hours to notice them on the dining table...

Hidai took advantage of the only semi-sunny day to take the kids to play outside a bit and pretend it's actually Spring.

Lastly for now we took them on the best day out we could think of - a visit to the M&M shop (fourth time) because my kids absolutely love it.

we took them to Yon's shrine - Hamley's. The minute he goes inside it's like he is in heaven. All those soft toys and animals, he just can't get enough. We were there for an hour going through each and every animal before Yon let us leave.

After that and the traditional chocolate muffin and McDonald's we took them to watch We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theater. We wanted to take them to a musical, but we are not big fans of the kids musicals - I don't understand the whole movies-made-into-musicals thing and Yon isn't big on the people-dressed-as-animals thing, so that went out the window. We finally settled down on Rock of Ages, but the lady at the ticket booth said it is not advisable with it being set at a strip-club and all. So we took them to We Will Rock You because we've already seen it a few years ago, and the kids knew almost all the songs by heart. We've bought tickets in the middle of the stalls and prayed that the kids will like it. They loved it. Ron was transfixed, and even Yon was into the whole thing for most of the time, except for about 10 minutes at the start of the second act, but by the time the big numbers have arrived they were both singing and clapping and everything. So very recommended.

 

Oh yeah, we also taught the kids how to play real Black-Jack with chips and all. A very viable life-lesson for Ron, the house always wins (and as I was the house, I treated it as if I won).

So did we save London for ourselves? to be honest I am not sure. We decided when we got here to try and enjoy everything we could in London, that way if we leave here we will have no regrets, we will feel as if we exhausted everything there is to do here. We haven't of course, but we also found out that some things are not for us anymore, or were never for us, and that what we get out of London is somewhat different to what we originally thought. Yes, once again we learned the lesson that things are more complicated than we think.
For this week we have so many plans... Tomorrow is yet another one of Yon's fun-fun-fun eye checks, then we have a movie on Wednesday (maybe, it's all rain dependant) and a trip to Golders Green is also on the cards.
Yes, we are all about the fun.