The Lake District

 I'm getting too far behind on here!  So, a few months ago, I thought it would be fun to do some camping.   I had heard that the Lake District is gorgeous and has a lot of campground options.  It's England's largest National Park and there are around 18 lakes in the area.  We planned to go over a four day weekend that Jake had off work.  Somewhere between planning and reserving a place to camp at, we remembered that we aren't really fans of camping.  Especially taking the chance that we'll be camping in the rain.  Love the outdoors and all, just not a fan of sleeping outdoors and going without showers.  So,  Jake found a cute holiday cottage to rent for a few days.  It was great.  We took off early Friday morning, Aug 26th, and played in the Lake District until Monday.  It's about a 4 1/2 hr. drive.  Here's the cottage we stayed at.  More like town home if you ask me.

     

Check out how pretty this area of the country is.  Took this next one out the car window.

Remember how we drive on the Left here?  And our family car is an American spec so the driver is on the wrong side?  It's scary to be passenger in the front when roads are narrow and speed limits are 55.  People go 60-70.  One car swiped our mirror on this trip.  On my side of course.  Love that.  The roads in the area are teeny tiny.  Made for tiny Euro cars and built forever ago.  First day in the Lake District we just drove around to see the area.
Quite a bit of panicking goes on when you're not the one driving.  You feel like the oncoming cars are going to take you out in the passenger side.  They pretty much almost do.  Jake got sick of me telling him to slow down and to pull over, and that I was in the lane of oncoming traffic.  This picture is totally out of focus and crappy, but you get the picture.  This is a 2 way road.

Pressing on, the first area we visited was Windermere.  Lake Windermere is probably the biggest tourist area of the Lake district.  Mountains, the lake, and a cute little village full of shops make it fun.  Found a great outdoor/fitness gear store.  They were having a sale, so we got Luke's coat for the year early.  While in the town, we went to the World of Beatrix Potter attraction.  It was pretty fun seeing all the cutie little characters in her books.  A friend gave us a set of Beatrix Potter books when Luke was tiny, so the kids were familiar with the stories.  It was fun.  Not worth driving up just to see the place, but it was a fun little add-on to the trip.  Beatrix's cottage is not far from here, too.  My favorite part was seeing Mr. McGregor's garden.

Ella wasn't sure what to think of some of the characters.  Some looked a little too real.  Haha.

A few more pictures of Beatrix Potter's World...

Got some cute chocolate mice at the gift shop on the way out.  Yum.

After walking around town for a little while, we headed over to the lake.  There are some little paths and parks around that were fun to explore.  Jake tried to teach Luke how to skip rocks.













































I love that Brits have tea time.  I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.  So, not really related to tea time or this trip, but there was a tiny little kid at the park a couple of days ago that kept telling us he had a  Lovely, Lovely doughnut for a pudding after lunch!  It was just lovely!  It was the cutest thing ever, so had to write it down somewhere.  ha!  You hear cutie things like that all the time here, but that phrase just stuck with me.  Lots of restaurants have good tea time specials.  Random sign on our walk through Windermere...

More Windermere pictures...

Super pretty lake.  We thought about renting one of those little wooden boats for a few hours, but it started to rain.

 Just liked these colors :)























The kids had fun rolling down the hills...  you can't see them very well in this next picture, but they're there.

The next day we went over to Ullswater.  Another lake.  Not as commercialized as Windermere, so if we were to really go camping I'd choose a campsite here.  It was pretty chilly.  At first the kids just wanted to go back to our little cottage, but after we walked around a bit they found some cool trees to climb and big puddles to jump in.  If there are puddles and trees, life is good.

Stopped at the ruins of Penrith castle on our way back from Ullswater.  You can climb on most of the ruins around.  Fun, but makes me nervous sometimes!  Not a soft landing if you trip.  It's a good thing my kids have Jake around or they wouldn't get to do as many adventurous things.
 

Luke thought it was awesome that Jake climbed up and looked out of this high window, so he had to do it too.

More pictures taken from the car while driving around.  Got to love the cricket uniforms.

Liked this view...

Heather is everywhere now.  Lots of Lavender too.

Um, ya.  Pretty sure I take too many pictures.

Love mini coopers.  

On the drive back home, we went through the Preston area.  I spy an angel Moroni.

Stopped to check out the Preston temple for a while since we hadn't seen it before.  The England Missionary Training Centre is right next to it.  Would be fun if Luke ended up here 14 years from now!  

So, that was our Lake District adventure.

Summer Fun

One of the best things about living on base so far has been having friends close by.  Our last neighborhood off base didn't really have any little kids.  Luke and Ella have loved being able to run across the street or down the street to grab a buddy when they're bored.  

Meet the 3 amigos.  Hunter, Cole, and Luke.  They spent summer days building weapons and coming up with war strategies.  They hop on their bikes and frequent the park to plan their attacks. 

Ella wakes up asking when Amelia can come over.  She lives two houses down, and the girls like to run back and forth between houses.  Here they were one day dancing on the trampoline.

Cute little friends.  Life is good when you can run around with a buddy in your swimsuit (with ice cream all over your face) and dance all afternoon!

Legoland Windsor

Luke, Ella, and I went with some friends to Windsor for a couple of days last week for a Legoland trip!  Linda talked me into going, and I'm glad she did.  It was a fun summer hoorah for the kidos before school starts next week.  Jake and Michael couldn't miss work and could care less about Legoland really, so we did it sans husbands.  Legoland has a pretty good deal going now where you buy a day and get a day free. You get a killer deal on a hotel room close by too.  Pretty nice.  It's only a two hour drive to Windsor, but it's nice not to have to drive all the way back home after a long park day.  The first day there it rained.  Awesome because there were pretty much no lines.  The second day was nice and sunny, and the park was a zoo.  I'm only going again if it's a rainy day or if British school is in session!  

  

So we don't forget our fun little trip, here are some pictures...

Here's Maryn, Hayden, Dallen, Bennet, Luke, and Ella posing with the Lego family.  So cool that you can make practically anything with Legos.      

On the little bumper cars they ask the kids how old they are before they can go and claim a car.  Ella told the guy she was 2, only to be told she was too little to ride.  Have to be 3-5 yrs for this one.  She was sooo sad.  Poor kid had to watch Luke and Hayden ride and sobbed the whole time.  So, since she's just a week and a half shy of being 3, the next day we fibbed and said she was 3.  She was so proud of her 'drivers license' they gave her at the end.  Well worth our little white lie.  Ha.  

And here she was in action.   :)

Luke says his favorite ride was the big boat.  These things give me crazy stomach tickles!  I love them.  Glad he likes them as much as I do!  He has become a lot more adventurous in the last year as far as doing stuff like this goes!  The fun thing about Legoland is that if you're 5, you're tall enough to go on everything.  Here he was in the back row with Linda and Ben.  

These little containers were everywhere around the park.  I didn't know that people recycle gum. That is beyond gross.  I feel for whoever has to clean out the gum recycling balls.  

So, they have this building there that has a wall of Lego portraits of famous people.  I think the one of David Beckham looks exactly like Jake.  Weird since they don't look alike in person.  Check it out.  #10 Lego man looks like Jake, huh?  

Small land was my favorite.  They have Lego cities highlighting a lot of countries.  

Cutie Lego Queen...

Luke and Hayden are best buds.  Here they are on the Laser Raider ride.

And on the swings.  Ella was terrified of these.  

Glad I got to spend a few fun days with my munchkins and our friends before school starts.  Good times!

my little puddle jumper

Doesn't matter if we're on our way into church, a store, if the water is on the street and has oil floating on it, or if it's in our backyard. There is no stopping Ella when it comes to puddle jumping! A week or so ago she was putting on her wellies to go outside, so I grabbed the camera and followed her around. She even climbed up on the play table to jump in all the little puddles on there.  Love my little girl!  Ü

 

A Saturday at Buckingham Palace

The Queen goes to Edinburgh for August and September, so Buckingham Palace is open to visitors.  Jake and I went with the kidos on Saturday to tour the state rooms.  Pretty fun.   Earlier in the week watching the news about all the riots going on in the country, I wasn't sure we'd be able to go into the city.  Luckily, things calmed down and we didn't have to change our Saturday plans.  Our tickets were for the 12:30 tour.  Since we got there earlier in the morning, we had time to play at St. James Park and to watch the changing of the guard before going inside.  Here's the palace.  Seems like every time I go to the palace, there's construction going on in front.

My 3 cuties in front of the gate.  We somehow managed to lose both Ella's jacket and Luke's umbrella before the day was over.  Losing stuff on day trips is a talent we've acquired here.

I just like this one of Luke with the guard in the background :)

These next couple of pictures aren't the greatest quality, but I like them anyway.  I was holding Ella up so she could see with one of my arms... the other arm was taking pictures.  Since we didn't stake out a spot an hour early for the changing of the guard, we stood behind some other tourists to see.

Inside the palace was very cool.  Not as gaudy as Versailles, but a lot fancier than the White House.  We saw Kate's dress, shoes, and wedding jewelry since they're on display now.  Fun to see them in person.  She's even tinier than I thought!  The waist in that dress is teeny.   William and Kate's wedding cake is on display, too.  Very pretty but probably wouldn't taste so great... traditional English wedding cake is fruit cake.  haha.  No photography is allowed inside the palace, so we just took some pictures once outside in the back gardens.

I love all the trees here.  Here's one from the palace gardens...

After we left the grounds at Buckingham, we went over to see the Science Museum.  We didn't stay long since we were hungry, but they've got some cool stuff.  One of these days we will have to go back.  We were in the transportation area most of our time there.  Thought these cars were cutie.

Old school dental equipment.  Looks like it belongs on a Dr. Seuss movie.

This church building serves most of the London area.  It's across the st. from the science museum.

There are areas in London where you can see where bombs took out parts of buildings in WWII. 

Check out the shrapnel damage to this building.

Riding in a cab..

Playing around at St. James park.  There are tons of greedy squirrels and birds there.  They are super cute and will come up to grab food from you.  The kids love it.  I love it too.  Reminds me of feeding squirrels at the cabin!

 

After eating dinner at Pierinos and stopping for an ice cream at the Creperie, we went back to the park for a little bit before catching the bus home. 

And then, school FINALLY was out for summer!

British schools got out for summer holiday July 22. 
I snapped a picture of Luke and his reception teacher, Mr. Stratford, on the last day of school. 

We have really liked Mr. Stratford.  Luke learned so much this past year!  Going to school here has been a great experience.  He'll start Kindergarten on Sept. 6 on base.  After a lot of going back and forth on whether to keep him at the same British primary school or to put him in elementary school on base, we decided on putting him in American kindergarten.  We're looking forward to having him home with us on the American holidays, and when Jake has family days off work!  We'll be able to do quite a bit more traveling this way.  Not to mention the school is a short walk from our house.  I'm hoping he won't be too bored.  British schools are way ahead of those in the States.  During the early school years anyway.  I guess we'll see how it goes!