Our Days in the UK

This is a little late, but I have been soaking up all the holiday goodness this year. Last year, Christmas day was a blur in the preparation for our trans-Atlantic move. This year, I have been savoring every move-less moment. We've made Christmas cookies, and had fires in our living room woodstove (courtesy of my husband with slightly pyromaniacal tendencies...) We've made lots of crafts, hosted a Christmas craft party for our home ed friends, and made presents. We went to a home ed nativity in Cheltenham. Justin was a date palm and Rebecca a donkey (closest thing to a horse...) We cut out snowflakes, read Christmas stories, and opened our advent calendar. (I filled the advent calendar with a hand-sewn felt nativity scene. That was an awesome idea, but better to have it sometime in October than in late November like I did. I had to sew every night to keep up! But now I have it for years to come!) My mom came a few days before Christmas, and we have hiked and shopped and playe

After seeing castles and walled cities we moved on to the nature hike part of our trip. The highest peak in Wales is Snowdon in Snowdonia National Park. Eric found a trail midway up the mountain. We drove by it in the morning but the lot was full, so we went castle-ing and then came back in the afternoon. Sure enough, there were a few spaces by then, and it worked out well because we had only planned to hike for a couple hours anyway. On the peak there was crazy wind chill and we weren't prepared for cold-weather mountaineering! So we hiked about an hour, then turned around and came back. Actually, I started back with the kids, and Eric continued on another twenty minutes or so. We were racing the clock because it gets dark so early this time of year and so far north. By the time the kids and I got back to the car it was solidly dusk and by the time Eric got back it was dark. I am sure he would have hiked farther and higher had I not made him promise to turn around by 3:30 to bea

After the beach we headed to Conwy Castle. As it turns out, it is also a walled city--one of the best preserved walled cities in all of Europe. It really reminded me of Avila in Spain, where Eric and I went years ago when I visited him there when we were dating. (Can you believe we've been married for more than fifteen years!? I felt so old and wise when we got married, but looking back I was such a baby! Fortunately, I managed to choose a good husband despite my youth :) ) Anyway, back to northern Wales. Conwy was probably the favorite castle we've been to since moving here. Combined with the walled city, it was pretty spectacular and well-preserved. Probably a highlight for all of us was the private room overlooking the chapel where Edward I could watch and listen to Mass without having to appear in public (which wouldn't have actually been public--just the others in the castle.) He even had a private en-suite bathroom in the little room. For whatever reason, going in t

Rebecca wanted to go to the beach when she found out how close we were, so on Saturday morning before we went castle-ing and hiking we stopped for a while at the beach. We found a nice open stretch of beach on our way up the coast to Conwy Castle. We all had fun, and enjoyed the cloudy grey beachiness.  There were TONS of these weird brown bamboo-looking mussels (or something?) all over. They were long and rectangular almost. Anyone seen these before? Very different than the sort I'm used to seeing! We saw lots of pretty ocean views, and the kids had fun playing in the very gentle tide. Also, doesn't that look like a worm!! Well, it's not. It's just sand. I stepped on a bunch to make sure. (Not that I usually go around squashing worms. The first one I poked at to see and then realized it was sand.) Anyway, what makes that happen? Nature is so amazing! Really anywhere we go there is some small new detail we've never seen before. Re

We just got back from a several day trip to northern Wales. We have been wanting to visit Snowdonia National Park since we arrived here last January, and we finally scheduled a trip in celebration of both Eric and I passing the driving test. That may sound funny, but when I finally post about the whole process, you will learn that it is a life accomplishment equal to finishing my dissertation and birthing two 9+ pound babies. Anyway, I digress. We stayed in the cute harbor town of Porthmadog and explored from there. The first day we visited Harlech Castle, one of a string of castles built by Edward I to subdue the unruly Welsh princes. (Incidentally, upon speaking to the locals, we learned that Edward and his successors created quite a lot of resentment that lasts until this day. In fact, much more so than in our many visits to south Wales, people seemed to really like that we were Americans rather than English. And in Porthmadog the vast majority of people spoke Welsh as their first