July 28th - please wait

I'm sorry for the delay in posts. The next post is about the wedding, and our wedding pics have temporarily been mis-placed! I assume my techno saavy husband can easily retrieve them. I'm trying to stay calm that those, along with some other photos from later in our trip have disappeared. So strange. It's the first time this has happened!

So, when Paul returns from a business trip, and when my sister's visit is over, he may have a chance to locate the missing photos. In the mean time, stay tuned. I may skip the wedding and do a few posts out of sequence. We're so backed up, it shouldn't matter anyway!

Thanks for being patient with me!

Wednesday, June 30th - another wonderful day in the Cotswolds!

I got up early today, but the rest of the Macs slept until 11:00 AGAIN! I went in around 10:30 and started getting everyone up, but I let them take it slow. I should have woken the kids earlier, but I enjoyed the peace and quiet (how many times do I get that?) Even when I woke them, they were pretty drowsy. Our plan was to again spend the day outside in the fresh air and keep the kids busy. We decided to go to the "Highest little castle in the Cotswolds" near the village of Broadway, along with a couple of other pretty Cotswolds villages.



















Paul planned a route and off we went.

We had a lot of trouble with the kids. No matter what we did, they kept drifting off to sleep!







































Not all of them slept, of course.
















That's part of the challenge when handling multiple kids. That's probably why I took advantage of the quietness this morning, even though it may not have been a smart choice.

We arrived at "The highest little castle in the Cotswolds" and look at this view!















Look at the cute castle!




















There was even a field of sheep! Sheep were the first thing we saw when we moved to England. There was a field of sheep across from the school we attended when we lived in England. Here are more sheep. I felt right at home.














More beautiful views. Supposedly we were at the highest point in the Cotswolds.















We headed into the castle and started up the stairs.




















There were a couple of levels where we could stop and read about the history.















Sadly, the kids weren't as interested in the history as Paul, and I followed them to the top while we let Paul absorb everything he could read. (Normally Megan likes to read all of the history as well, but I think she just needed to wake up and be in the fresh air today!)

We took some cool pictures of the spiral staircase on the way up.















We made it to the top! It was surprisingly windy and cool. The kids wanted to immediately start back down, but I made them wait at least until we could see Paul on his way up!




















We liked the choice of flag that was flying (Scottish, although we couldn't figure out why).















Have you read the book, "Going on a Bear Hunt"? Our kids used to LOVE that book! I thought it was such a fun book, but it never occurred to me that we'd actually ever fight our way through a snow storm (hoooo woooo), or go through a mud stream (squelch squerch), or EVER walk through grass up to our shoulders....but look!















Swishy swashy!!!! There are things about England that I really enjoy, and this is one of them.

We did everything we could in that little castle, so we drove back down towards the village of Broadway and looked around. It was very small, but had lovely British houses.















Now that I am acquainted with things in Britain, let me tell you that these are beautiful English houses. It would have been so fun to see them inside!














































I love the abundance of flowers in Britain.















It was past lunch time, and we needed a place to eat. We asked a man where to have lunch, and he really spent time helping us. He said there was only one family type pub in Broadway, and it was very expensive. If we drove less than 5 miles to the next village there was a great family pub that he recommended called, the "Black Bear". We voted for that option and felt thankful that he was so helpful.





















It was a WONDERFUL pub, VERY friendly, and had a great children's menu. Best of all, since we were eating so late, we were the only people in this room, and they put the big TV on Wimbledon for us. Andrew is very interested in tennis, and we had trouble getting him and me out of the pub after lunch!















Next on our list was a village called, "Burton on the Water". Turns out there is "Burton on the Hill" as well. For you Austinites, it reminded me of the County Line BBQ place "on the water" and "on the hill". We specifically wanted the one with the model village. We thought the kids would do well walking around first the real village, and then the model of the village. We had NO IDEA it would be so excellent! This is Burton on the Water.




























What a lovely ice cream place! Just totally picturesque.
















There was an occasional bridge over the water.















This is kind of funny. I spotted a shop called something like, "Girls Toy Store". I had a pang of how neat it would be to take just the girls into it, so I pointed it out to Paul and suggested that the girls and I have a very SHORT look around. We did, and it really wasn't anything too special - lots of fairy wings and pink things. It was fun to be with just the girls though. We were probably there 10 min - I'm not exaggerating, and when we came out, this is what we saw:















I leave the boys with Paul for less than 10 min, and they are walking around IN the water?? I could only see ONE end this - disaster! What was Paul thinking? I joking asked him just that, and he calmly replied, "we had a long talk about it, and they understood that if they get wet, we don't have anything with us for them to change into."

Again, I ask, WHAT was he thinking? Andrew MIGHT go for that, but John would simply DEMAND to have dry clothes, and if we didn't provide them, I fully predict that he would firmly remove all of his clothes and go naked. Thankfully, they came out of the water mostly dry and having had a great time. I think it's just as fun to have boys as it is girls (different for sure, but just as fun).

By the way, for concerned grandparents, the streams/rivers were not deep at all. The deepest MIGHT have been to John's knees, but I recall them being mostly ankle deep.

We had our ice cream and located where the model village was. I had to run across the street and ask in the bakery. There weren't any signs or maps, and everyone that we asked had a different opinion!

We Macs like to have an agenda to follow, and by golly, we were interested and going to find this model village! I hoped it wasn't a wash out.

First we went down this kind of maze.















It ended at the village and it was not a wash out AT ALL! It was SO NEAT! The village was EXACTLY like the real one that we had just walked through!














It was real down to the tiny model size REAL trees that were somehow kept little for it!















It had every single building that was in the normal size village!



















It even had a model village inside of the model! (and a model village inside of the model of the model village....and one inside of that as well!) See if you can find them.
















The whole thing was made of out the same stone that the Burton on the Water village was made out of.
















Were the boys trying to get wet AGAIN? I love how John looks like a giant in this picture!















There was so much detail. Look at the tiny clothes in the Edinburgh wollen mill!















This is the "real" Mad Hatter














This is a different angle, but here is the model of the Mad Hatter.














Almost every village has a local village church. That is Kathryn in the blue to the left of the church - gives you an idea of the size of the building, and how much effort went into making this model village.















What are these guys looking at?




















Oh, it's the inside of another church, and if we listened carefully, we could hear real organ music being played!















I have a picture of me when I was about 8 standing with my mom and my sister at a model village made out of legos when I was a child. This picture reminds me so much of that picture.















Look at the mini row of hedges at the model church.















We had a great day. It was time to go back to our 500 year old English cottage in the Cotswolds and make dinner, then HOPEFULLY get everyone to bed at a more "normal" hour and hopefully have them wake up a little earlier tomorrow. Tomorrow - we were going to visit hopefully 1-2 more villages in the Cotswolds and also go to Oxford. We were leaving our cute little house and checking into the hotel for the wedding!

We have never "suffered" from jet lag so badly. On previous trips across the Atlantic, the kids would have one rough night, and more or less be adjusted. Maybe it was the extra 2 hours time difference from California to England, or maybe it is that the kids are that much older, but ALL of us slept until 11am today! I woke a few times, but it felt SO GOOD to sleep, that I allowed myself the luxury of sleeping in.

We hastily roused ourselves at 11 and made ourselves go outside for some fresh air. We headed int Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare.

What a CHARMING village it was!














It reminded me so much of York, which we visited with my cousin and his family in 2009.
First order of business was lunch. We ate at Anne Hathaway's pub. It was one of our few experiments eating at a pub. We were pretty leery of them when we lived there, because our children were so young and not adjusted to British food. They are that much older now, and this one in particular had a nice looking children's menu. It was completely wonderful! I love nice British pubs. I felt bad that we hadn't tried them more when we lived in England.














After lunch we walked along the river (the Avon river). The boats reminded us of the Cams river in Cambridge.














This is the lake, Avon. We like the locks.














Paul thought that it was so cool that you could get on a boat here, and end up on York, after 115 locks, 236 miles, and 99 hour later!















There was a whole group of statues in Shakespeare's memory. Shakespeare was in the middle.




















There were 4 other statues, in a "square" around him of some of his most famous characters. This is Lady Macbeth.



















Hamlet.





















Paul had a conference call, so the kids and I parked ourselves in the grassy area along the river and made up games involving a lot of races while Paul went to a quieter area and did his call. Then we ventured on to locate Shakespeare's birth home. This is the pedestrian street where his house is.
















This is his birth house. So pretty, isn't it? I LOVE this architecture!














They had people dressed in period costumes acting the part of people in that time period. Here is one of them.















This is the library! Wouldn't you LOVE to check books out of this library???!















This Christmas shop was across the street. I am a total sucker for Christmas shops, especially the ones with authentic German ornaments! For the record, though, I didn't buy anything - I didn't even go into the shop! It was getting late and we were still pretty tired. We had walked around and we were hoping for a nice night's sleep tonight.















Paul had another conference call, so he drove us to this play park.














Our kids have always loved the British parks. I do, too. I'm not sure why they don't have these kinds of parks in America. The parks in Britain generally have TONS of space, natural habitat (logs to climb on, trees with swings on them, and these neat play things). That (above) is a practice skateboard run.

This (below) is a web to climb.















There goes John!















Andrew made it to the top!




















These kinds of swings are really fun! I laid on it for awhile, just relaxing, when all 4 were on the web.















John liked climbing on this.
















Here is Paul on his conference call.














We had a delicious dinner back in our beautiful 500 yr old English cottage, and went to bed. Tomorrow, the "highest little castle in the Cotswolds" and another charming village.