Our Days in the UK

Back in February we went to London for one of Justin's Christmas present train trips. In between trains we checked out the Foundling Museum.  Rebecca had watched some episodes of the historical fiction show Hetty Feather, about a foundling girl in the 19th century who lived in the Foundling Hospital the museum centered on. We all really enjoyed the museum, even Justin who was eager for his next train. All the artwork, many by famous artists who donated works to the Hospital as benefactors, pictured children, often with Jesus helping them. There were exhibits covering daily life for the foundlings, including a dress up station that Rebecca enjoyed. I'm glad she's not a foundling, but she does look pretty cute in the bonnet. If she were really a foundling, she wouldn't be wearing shoes, since they shared them between each other. Handel served as one of the most famous benefactor-artists of the hospital. Indeed, his famous Messiah was performed every ye...

We moved to our new house last October, so it's not really so new. But we've been exploring the new set of footpaths that surround us here (we're just a few villages down from Naunton, still in the beautiful Cotswolds). Our favorite path winds past the old railway embankment, crosses the tracks, and leads to the neighboring village. It also crosses the stream (which here is technically a river) twice and we've spotted lots of fish and crawdads. Justin also dropped a shoe in the river once, but that's another story. Fortunately, it was a buoyant Croc so we rescued it with a long stick... Anyway, here's (one of) our new favorite places to walk in our village. That bridge you see up above is the best crawdad-spotting place on the walk. We saw a bunch and looked up the species. It turns out that the native crawdads are being crowded out by an invasive species from America, and that's the species we saw in our local stream. Hopefully the locals don...

And in our quick march through the past five months, we move from New Year's Day to mid-February...We didn't get anywhere near the snow we got last winter, but in February we did have a solid snowfall that was play-in-able. The neighborhood kids got a snow day off school so my kids joined them to build a snowman in the front yard and the green across from us in our cul-de-sac. Justin and Rebecca also set up a snow cone factory in our backyard using fruit juice and snow. Everyone (except Eric) misses the proper snows of a good New England winter, but we feel grateful that we've had at least some snow in both of the winters we've been here so far. The summer that followed last winter's exceptional snowfall was also exceptional in its hotness and dryness, so we'll see what this summer brings. This spring we've had only a handful of warm days, but we've definitely had quite a few sunny days. It's so nice because during the winter it feels li...

Do you remember this breakfast above from my very first post? Well, to mark our one year anniversary in the UK we went to the very same pub we went to for our very first breakfast on New Year's Day. This time we weren't jet-lagged.  The kids want to make it a tradition, so maybe I'll post the same breakfast picture (on the same plate, no less) every year. The pub was still all decked out for Christmas, so excuse the seasonally-inappropriate-by-now decor in the background. I haven't downloaded pictures from my phone since, oh, last December, so we will reminisce together as I catch up. But my main reason for posting these pictures is that on New Year's Day, shortly after our anniversary breakfast, we also discovered that we will be welcoming a new person to our family in early September! Here are some answers to FAQs: 1) We are all very excited. 2) I am now almost through the second trimester and have been feeling really good. I anticipate exhaustio...

On the second day of our beach trip in between skiing days we went to Ronda, a beautiful mountain village about an hour from Marbella where we were staying. If I want to go back to Gibraltar to see more of the history (which I do), I really really really want to go back to Ronda! Although the village itself is small-ish, there is SO much history: prehistoric cave paintings, Roman ruins, a very large Arab influence, including 13th and 14th century Arab baths, and the famous 18th century Puente Nuevo ("nuevo" being a relative term here, especially for the Americans among us.)  We saw only a fraction of the sites since we only had the afternoon. Here are some of them! This is the Palace of the King of the Moors, which actually probably wasn't his palace, but does have features dating back to the 13th century, and which houses what was originally the only source of water into the city. This is the breathtaking Tajo canyon that the famous Puente Nuevo spans. You ...

We are back in Spain now for a final ski vacation before the snow season is over. We decided that this first season it would be good for the kids to have one more trip to consolidate their skills before they have to wait until next year. So we came last week, skied for a few days, and then took a break on the coast over the weekend while the resort was really busy. While there, we went to Gibraltar for an afternoon. We all enjoyed it, if we ended up walking a bit more than the kids would have liked. (We parked the car on the Spanish side, having heard the traffic over the border could be bad.) To get across the border you have to actually walk across an airport runway. Justin thought that was pretty fun. As we got closer to the English side we could see the iconic rock of Gibraltar looming ahead. We didn't have very much time there, having gone swimming in the morning at our hotel. So we walked (a somewhat circuitous route) to the cable cars and got one of the last...

Growing up in California, for me "skiing in the Sierra Nevada" meant Tahoe.  Growing up in Spain, for Eric "skiing in the Sierra Nevada" meant southern Spain and views of the Mediterranean from the peak. I'm quite sure that Tahoe has its charms (the lake, for one...) but I have to say, the original Sierra Nevada mountains are pretty great.  Eric came here to ski with his family in the '90's and loved it, so we decided this would be a good place for the kids' first ski experience. Eric was hoping for good snow and warm weather, so that the kids could have good skiing without being too cold. He must have been good the last few months, because he certainly got exactly what he hoped for. Both yesterday and today it's been perfectly blue and sunny and warm (well, relatively warm--probably in the 50s down where I am and the 40s up on the peak). And just a week before we got here a big storm dumped feet of snow (in perfect timing for our arrival.) ...