Sunday, July 11th - Thursday, July 15th

We rose very early Sunday morning and said, "goodbye" to Pete, Bernadette, Andrew and Sarah. We wanted to be in Cambridge by 11am for C3's (where we worshiped when we lived in Cambridge) 2nd church service.

It was surreal to be back in Cambridge! It felt "natural", and so weird! It felt just like it did when we lived there, and yet we no longer live there. We were visiting, but it didn't feel like a visit.

It was great being back at C3 - again so surreal. It was great to hear the head pastor preach again. We've missed him, although our new pastor is good, too. Change, so hard for me! :(

We were staying with our very special friends, the Corries, who also have 4 children. Can you imagine 12 people in one British house?! The Corries were absolutely AMAZING hosts - they were SO BRAVE to have all 6 of us stay with them, and they made it look easy to accommodate us. Our girls shared bedrooms with their older girls, our boys had a room, their younger girls had a room, and Paul and I had our own room in their newly converted attic. They made it look so easy, and we were all so comfortable! We had a lot of fun with them.

Paul and Pippa went to work every day while Andrew (Pippa's husband) and I maintained the 8 children, kept up with the meals and generally had a lot of fun. We went to a park or 2, played cards with the kids, and I know I enjoyed having another adult around during the day so 1 adult could run an errand without taking a set of 4 kids with them.

One morning the Corrie's two younger girls were in pre-school, so Andrew and I took the remaining 6 kids to Angleysee Abbey. It's a Jacobean style English country house with both formal and informal gardens. It was beautiful - both the house and the gardens. That is Andrew and John in the house. Can you believe how tall Andrew is getting? Somehow I "froze" the kids in my mind at ages 1, 3, 5 and 7....the ages they were just after we moved to England. I can't believe Andrew takes up so much of his bed now, and John is totally independent....and Megan is 2 years away from being a TEENAGER! Where does the time go?















Here is another view of the house, except I think this is the informal house....I'm not sure.















We didn't explore the inside of the houses. We stayed on the garden paths. They were completely beautiful, and allowed the kids to run and burn off energy. Here is a nice lily pond.















Some of the abundance of beautiful English flowers.















Andrew discovered that he could swing from a vine on this tree! Every kid needs a tree swing!















Here is Jemima with our 4 kids.
















Here is Rosie. They were SUCH great hostesses! They shared all of their things, moved out of their bedrooms, and generally made our kids feel SO WELCOME! GREAT job, big girls!



















More wandering around the gardens and outside of the houses.















After taking the paths, we emerged in this enclosed beautiful area with a sun dial. Andrew Corrie showed the kids how to read a sun dial. Our kids are STILL telling me how you read it! They were fascinated!
















The is the "sundial" teaching event.




















This was my favorite. It doesn't show up as beautiful on the picture, but it was called something like the "ghost woods". I think they might be white birch trees. They were just spell binding pretty!
















Near the end of our exploration, we came to these beautiful rose gardens. The kids spent quite a bit of time smelling each rose bush and finding out which color had the best smell.















To keep the boys amused, Andrew Corrie taught our boys how you can turn into a rhino. Our Andrew LOVED it, and now all of our kids like to show their friends using our rose bushes in California! Andrew C - you are influencing American culture!!!




















The rose bush smelling contest got the girls interested in making and selling "perfume". When we returned to the Corries' house later that day, they started making perfume out of the rose petals they had collected (the ones that had fallen off of the bushes naturally), and that turned into a full blown bake sale.

It was kind of hysterical. Pippa and Paul would come home after work, open their computers, and work some more. It was a mirror image of our life in the U.S.! One night I came down from putting our 4 to bed (well, kind of...it was like 4 days of a giant slumber party for the kids) and found that the bigger girls were interested in making lemonade to sell at their upcoming bake sale. We went on-line to find a lemonade recipe using real lemons, and I was drafted to dissolve the sugar in hot water for the lemonade!

The bake sale kind of took over our life. Pippa and Paul went to work in the morning while the older Corrie girls and our 2 girls baked their hearts out.














The sale was all of the next day, which was VERY windy and cool. The kids were going to sell until 11am, but they stayed out through noon and even at 1pm they were still out there. I felt terrible, but we were LEAVING CAMBRIDGE and I finally had to sort of drag the girls away from the bake sale. The kids HAD made a profit (if you don't count ANY cost into the equation) and they were trying to divy up the proceeds. We were all sad that our time had come to an end. We had a WHALE of a time staying with the hospitable Corries, and we hope they visit us in California so we can show them around our neck of the woods.














Tomorrow - our last entry about our vacation in England and bits and pieces about our stay there.

Weekend with the Donohoes

We arrived in Manchester after a long, tedious day in the car. The actual drive was supposed to take 3 hours. It took us 6 1/2. That seems to happen with us every time we drive from the London area to Manchester. I joked with the Donohoes that whenever we attempt to visit them, the BBC should alert their listeners that the McAs are en-route to Manchester so everyone be aware. There will be unusual accidents, unusually high traffic and strange, unannounced detours.

We left early, and took the toll roads, as Pete (Paul's brother-in-law) advised, but there was some sort of problem that caused the highway patrol to close the freeway. It wasn't anything terrible, just an accident that they wanted to investigate, so they closed the one highway that we were on, with no other back up highways available. We had to detour through small 1 lane villages - us and all of the hundreds of other cars on the same highway as us. It took hours.

We didn't anticipate having a problem, so we had no music, no books and pretty much nothing for the kids to do. They were WONDERFUL - at times high maintenance, but mostly extremely good.

There can be a lot of traffic around Biringham, and Paul was bent on getting through Birmingham before 1pm, which is the big city AFTER our unexpected detour. Thanks to our several hour long detour, now we were nip and tuck in achieving that goal. We pressed on through lunch with only hard candy and a few cookies to keep us going. We dolled out 1 piece to everyone every 30 min to those who had been "good".

When we were about an hour away from Manchester, it was roughly 2pm and we had not had lunch yet....and we had been sitting for roughly 5 hours. I felt awful for the kids, let alone my own growling stomach. I know that we have no idea what true hunger feels like (given 3rd world countries), but you know what I mean. The kids were tired and hungry and the boys were very antsy. I insisted that we stop for lunch and Paul agreed. The most likely place was McDs, but they aren't all over the place like they are in most parts of America. However, we did see a kids' pub just off of our exit that advertised a play scape for 2 pounds. Normally you don't have to pay for the play scapes, but this was a special pub with a particularly nice play scape. We'd have to pay $12, an OBSCENE amount of money for a pub playscape, but the kids had been very good, and who wants to arrive at a cousins' house with children who are desperate to run, jump and burn off some energy?

We stopped and the kids salivated over the awesome playscape. Then we discovered some false advertising. The OUTSIDE said it was 2 pounds/person, but the INSIDE WHERE YOU PAY said it was 3 pounds per person, which is about $20. We weren't pleased. The goal was to eat quickly and get to our destination. We were already hours past when we told Paul's sister that we would arrive. We decided against the playscape. There was a free outside play area, but it wasn't nice weather, and compared to the oasis of the amazing indoor playscape, the outside one was extremely paltry. Even John scornfully said it was too "baby-ish" for him!

I know - it was kind of like putting a sucker just up to a child's lips and then yanking it away just when he was going to lick it, but we wanted to do the right thing.

The kids reacted as expected - they were NOT happy with our new plan! Fortunately, I almost NEVER let them put money in the candy machines that cost about $0.25, and there was a nice selection at this kid friendly pub. For roughly .20 gbp (about $0.30 each, the kids CHEERFULLY agreed to give up the playscape and pick something from the candy machines after their lunch! What a great compromise for all of us!

We were in and out in 30-40 min and THANKFULLY arrived in Manchester (home to Manchester United soccer) way past our time, but healthy, fed and ready for cousin time.

We had a great visit in Manchester, as usual!

After hanging out for the rest of the day and catching up with family, the next day the Donohoes suggested we take a walk. The Donohoes always have something planned for us to do. No sense sitting around and relaxing when there are things to do! We haggled for a few minutes on which walk to take, and ended up at this one. (I forget the name)! It was EXCELLENT fun!

We parked by the side of a busy road and started on this nice looking path.




















The path went down these steps,




















where we were left in the woods.




















We had a map that showed we were going to see 7 scenic things. The first was this ledge. That is Sarah, our eldest girl cousin. Doesn't she look model pretty? Her personality is every bit as pleasant as she looks.















We left item 1 and backtracked per the map instructions.















It's been too much time and I didn't take any notes so all I have to go on are my pictures. These are probably terribly out of order.

We came to these crevices in the rocks.




















They were fun and we let the kids explore them for awhile. Then we headed for the "edge of the world". Really!















Here we are walking up to it.



















We spent some time enjoying how it just drops off - no guard gates or anything....just natural habitat. Then we headed to the next item on the list. It was another kind of ledge, although more gradual and safer.















In case you were wondering what it looked like when you went to the edge and looked over, it looked like this. I was NOT the one who let the kids climb on the rocks! (They had a TERRIFIC time!)
















The views were spectacular. See the tennis court nestled in the middle of no where?!
These natural walks in Britain are a lot of fun!














I think this is a view from the "edge". There is an air strip in there! We were fascinated!















Next our paths took us back through the forest.



















We encountered someone who was lost and Paul gave him directions.














This is our cousin, Andrew. He is amazing with the kids.



















He is very strong! The kids constantly ask him to do things requiring physical strength, and he always complies.



















He's helping John across the crevice.



















Kathryn didn't want to walk anymore.




















Bernadette, Paul's sister, brought a couple of pairs of binoculars. We used them to look at the views, but the boys LOVED them! Of course, John tried to walk with them held up to his eyes, and slowed us down hugely in places! What kid doesn't do that, though? It's just so intriguing to see how things get big in those glasses!














The kids picked up some "walking sticks" along the way.




















We really enjoyed being together in the forest!















We had the occasional obstacle to overcome.















This was one of our last landmarks - a very old well.
















Our reluctant walker (Kathryn) grew a bit weary and started to lag behind. She ALWAYS needs encouragement on these walks, but she is also our fastest runner!















She was REALLY dragging her feet at this point, and I was the lone posse in between the crowd up ahead and Kathryn trailing behind. I was feeling a little upset that they might leave us behind! There was a wide variety of terrain we had covered, and right now it was an obvious path, but what would happen if it emptied out into a clearing in the forest and there were several ways to go? I swear one day my "charge ahead" husband really IS going to lose me in an airport, or a train station, or a forest! (I know he'd come back for me.) :)



















After a LOT of encouragement and a small amount of admonition, Kathryn went fast enough to catch up and Andrew was right there to help! He was my hero to carry her like that!
Near the end of the trail we passed these cows. This was a great walk - so isolated in spots and yet so near to civilization in others.















Just after the cows we arrived back where we started, but on the other side of the road.















WE MADE IT!

What do you think we did when we arrived back home? Well, some of us did this:














And of course the girls and Sarah made cookies!














Sarah is a wonderful help around the house and FANTASTIC playing with the girls! Cousins are so great!

Next, we leave for a week in Cambridge. We were so excited to see our favorite school, our British friends and our old neighborhood!

Sunday, July 4th - Thursday, July 8th - cousin time!

The bride and groom live around the corner from Paul's mom's house in a 4BR house of their own. They very graciously offered their house to us as a place for us to stay while we stayed in the area and visited Paul's parents and several of his siblings (and some of the kids' cousins).

I have always loved their neighborhood. It is fairly large and has a small convenience store and 2 parks. You can get to these places by driving, or by walking on really neat paths - some on pavement,




















and some through the woods!




















This is the small park where the kids have played over the years. I love the addition of the round about that pedals to make it go.














This is the big park with the super fun obstacle course!















The kids have mostly moved on to this bigger park. Sigh. John still likes the smaller park, but mostly he keeps up with his siblings.






























We've even entered the "get together and do gymnastics" phase!




















Go Andrew!















That's our boy!



















These are fun swings - long chains and nice seats. They go high and fast!
















Recently (at least recently to us), the park added these rocks to climb. The kids had a BLAST!







































Everyone made it.































The neighborhood had a BBQ and carnival while we were visiting. What great timing!

We were relieved to see that Andrew's back seemed totally fine. (He's in the red shirt)















John liked to try different positions on the slide.
















The girls liked it, too. Megan is SOOOO good with John!















They had tons of books on sale - 7 for about $1.50. We couldn't resist....but WHAT were we thinking???? We were trying to REDUCE luggage, not add to it! Still, it was fun to have more British books to read, and for $1.50, how can you go wrong??

We had a pretty relaxing week, just hanging out at the park, and then seeing cousins after school. We also got to spend some time with some of Paul's siblings. Clare is due with her first this Sunday! We are hoping she will deliver by her due date, so when we swing back down to Fleet just before our trip home, we can see the baby! Doesn't she look FANTASTIC! I bet you can't tell that she's 9mo pregnant!















It's always good to hang out and visit the grandparents and Paul's siblings and the cousins. Next, we drive North, to Manchester, to visit more cousins.