Weekend with the Students---Bath

 The next day of our trip we spent on a tour of Bath. Here at the Crescent, we have fabulously expensive homes in this crescent-shaped building. The guide helpfully pointed out places where Jane Austen characters had their escapades, but unfortunately I didn't hear most of them. :) Today I tried to have an attitude adjustment after Mark pointed out that perhaps I was having a pity party the night before. I may congratulate myself when I am an empty-nester with a grown-ups only repeat of this trip, in which I will go on tours and hear it all. So. I gave up on hearing anything and just concentrated on having fun while trying to keep the little ones entertained.

 The group walked down hill a ways to this....______ Circus. I didn't catch the name of it, but the kids and I found this great ring of gigantic trees in the middle of it. We had fun running around until Marky fell and hit his head on the one piece of concrete in the whole thing. He is standing on it in the picture above. Boy the sound of screaming toddler sure rings out loud and clear in a circus. Hahaha.

 This is what happens when you tell these two that you want to take a picture that looks like they love each other.

 I'm telling you, those trees were huge!

 I do not know the significance of this building, except that it was extremely helpful to ask a fussing Marky, "See that lady? How did she get up there? Do you think she used a ladder, or did she jump down from the roof?" Marky spent the next five minutes at least in wonder, repeating, "How did she get up there?" He was stuck on that question until we got down to the river (Avon, again) and wanted to know if he could go in the river. When I said no, but look at the ducks swimming! He asked in all seriousness, "Please can I be a duck?"

 We were fortunate enough to tour the Roman baths complex that has been excavated here. Even without the benefit of the audio guide, it's pretty amazing--they had a whole temple for Sulis Minerva (Athena) and everything.

 I enjoy watching Mark explain things to the kids. I think this is where he's trying to tell them how the hot water comes up from the ground.

 Joel found this man demonstrating Roman armor. Joel watched and asked questions for several minutes.

 At the end of the tour, visitors are invited to drink the water as so many have done for health over the years. Blech! Warm (duh) and quite flavorful...in a negative way.

The highlight of our day family-wise was Royal Victoria Park and playground, which is gigantic and delightful. It's full of equipment I don't think one would find in the States, mostly because you could hurt yourself! Look at this tube slide! This playground had all kinds of playsets for all ages--even teenagers were here having fun. This playground time stands out in the kids' minds as the best part of the whole weekend. Yes, we could have gone out to the shops or toured Bath Abbey; but taking the munchkins here was definitely the right choice for us on this trip.

My View --Study Abroad Weekend Out

We have loaded up the 22 students and 5 of us, and we are off on our coach trip to Stratford-on-Avon.

We break out of London and get to see some lovely countryside. I notice that the color of the trees is just ever so slightly different from the States. Still green, just not exactly the same.

Sweet Swan of Avon!!

Reconciling idealism with reality: should we have dinner at Carluccio's Italian Restaurant...or McDonalds? Genius! Get take-away, and find a bench. Then we all can have what we appreciate. That's the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre back behind us.

This strikes me as awesome. Too bad it wasn't open.

Here we have all the crew at Anne Hathaway's cottage, listening to the tour guide. I cannot actually hear him, because I am back here and probably shouldn't be taking this photo. The boys are running amok in the very nice garden and I should be shushing them. In a minute I will try to distract them by saying, "Hey, come with me and we will see if we recognize any of these vegetables. Look, a squash! And  what's this? Brussels sprouts!"

This is upstairs at the cottage. This is someone's bed. I don't know whose, because I have gone upstairs ahead of the group and guide because these fellows, if you can believe it, are restless. They want to touch the bed, which is clearly forbidden.

Joel wants everyone to know that the best thing that has happened to him today was to find this leaflet with map about LEGOLAND. We will now wait for the group to come out of the cottage by...running amok in the garden.

We are now at Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried inside. The boys wanted to run amok in the cemetery, for which I personally cannot stand. I bring Small One over here to wait out the tour guide. 

Joel appreciates the rich history. I appreciate Mark's ability to carry him for the next hour. Not only is packing Joel nearly impossible for me, I am occupied with:

This guy, who MUST do his own walking. Better, he prefers being left behind so he can run to catch up. When we do catch up, I try to keep him interested in anything but running into the busy street while our group lingers in a particular spot. Our conversation goes like this:

"Marky, I see a white square. Do you see a white square? I see a red rectangle. Do you see a red rectangle? I see a flat tree..."

Marky determines that this drain is the most interesting thing he's seen today. It has dirt in it. Both of his feet fit in it. 

He also found Shakespeare. Well done.

Now he is one of the first on the coach so he can say hello to all the ladies as they board. Hello, ladies! 

Mark: "What is that?" Me: "I don't know, but I thought it was cool."

We are on our way to Bath. There are mountains! 

This is what we do while we wait for the students to check in at their guest house in Bath. We jump off of things. 

We go out to dinner at The Real Italian Pizza Co. We order gelato, one scoop.

It is a large scoop, and comes with chocolate biscuits.

It is delicious.

The wee ones charmed the staff with their cuteness and questions, such as "Why do  those other kids (having a birthday party) have balloons?" As we went to leave, they kindly brought us balloons, to the delight of all. This image is one of my favourites from the whole adventure so far: these guys bopping down the pavement with their balloons, hand in hand with their Dad, as night falls in Bath. 

British Museum, Round 2

 

This little girl is getting so big! She's asking big questions, and she's getting physically stronger and bigger. She also learned from her Aunt Sarah that it's hilarious to take pictures of herself making faces (thanks, Sarah--here is a recent self-portrait).

In response to her getting big, I wanted her to be helping me out--ah, are we transitioning to that phase of childhood? I think so! Mark and I cooked up a scheme (a popular word here) of things she could do that would be good for her to learn and be helpful to the family. That is, stuff that I don't have to do for her anymore! Yaaay! She's keen on being helpful and having responsibility, and all we had to do was stop and teach her how to do it a few times now that she's big enough. The ones I'm most excited about are sweeping up the dining room floor and doing her own laundry! The Big Adventure brought on this opportunity by limiting our other extra-curricular activities and social time, so we had slowed down enough that the idea had time to emerge. Good!

On one Saturday, Mark took the boys back to Coram's Fields playground while Noelle and I went to the British Museum for an hour or two. These two sites are near one another. We made a point to find the Easter Island statue since one of Noelle's favorite shows here, "Zingzillas," features some large talking heads modeled on this. She likes the tv ones better because they are smiling.

The artifacts here are unbelievable. It's seeing all the pictures from a history book be real things! Like this Assyrian/Babylonian statue, which was one of my favorite finds on this trip. We've been reading about Ancient Egypt, and she saw the hieroglyphs on this obelisk and was so excited to recongize some of the symbols from her book.

This excites me, because "seeing the actual stuff: was one of my big plans for the whole school year. Noelle also liked this Egyptians doorway facade.

 

 

After unsuccessfully looking for the Bible-era coins exhibit (we only found a few coins in a case), we met back up with the fellows and went home. I enjoy these outings together.

 



Meanwhile, this guy has been working hard. It pains him to give up the prospect of a Saturday alone in the library getting things done on his research when he's spent so much of the week doing other necessary things that aren't his research, but he has lovingly made space for family time or Katie-goes-away-by-herself-for-a-couple-hours time. Thank you.

Buckingham Palace tour

Being in London in September means that we had the opportunity to tour the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace! We made this a mommy-daughter outing.Noelle at Hyde Park Corner afterwards. She wanted to continue on, but since the Tube was down for the weekend and we had to use the replacement bus service, we turned toward home.

Wellington Arch is basically at the Corner, not far from the Palace. 

Noelle took this picture! She says the building is much prettier on the inside than the outside, and that they should paint it to be more colourful.

In front of the Victoria Memorial, waiting for our 1:30 tour time. Did you know that a Starbucks gift card from the US works in London? I determined that it does--oh happy day!

Noelle likes finding things with the EIIR insignia, like this fence post, mail boxes, etc. (Elizabeth II, Regina)

We think they don't want you going in here.

Unfortunately, no photos allowed inside. If they had been, I would have taken these:

• Noelle wearing the headphone audioguide and staring wide-eyed at the gilded ceilings and chandeliers.
• Fancy furniture and plaster work clearly meant to impress.
• The special exhibit of the coronation from 60 years ago, including the beautiful fancy beaded dress and huge purple fur robe--sweet! The diamond diadem impressed us too, and the video they played showing the actual coronation taught me a lot. 

Another day

 This trip has not been all sight-seeing, oh no. We have also watched a great deal of tv. Joel has been particularly infatuated with shows that feature crafts and activities. Back in Chicago, we saw an episode about "apricot slam dunkers." Joel had been unable to rest until I had gathered all the supplies.

Basically, one puts a dollop of cream cheese onto a circle of puff pastry dough. Add half an apricot, drizzle with syrup, and bake. Then use the apricot netting (this was the hardest thing to find), the lid of a wipes container, and a cereal box to make a basketball hoop. This was supposed to be easy, but it just reaffirmed my non-awesomeness when it comes to crafting and doing fun projects. Oh well--they had fun, even if no one but Joel actually ate the finished thing.

The kids have been playing meerkats regularly in the living room.

One day we went to Coram's Fields, which is an enclosed playground near Mark's office in central London. Check out this tube slide! Yes, that's my two-year-old climbing.

This picture explains to me why Joel can eat anything he wants--because this is how he "relaxes" with a snack. 

Here is our new megastroller, in which one who is careful can load not one but three Rankins. It is quite heavy and large itself.

Weeks after the aforementioned slam dunkers, I got around to using up the puff pastry dough by having them cut out shapes and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar before baking. I wish I could say that these were only two of our many enriching crafty cooking activities...but this is about the extent of it. We have seen a variety of sites, though, so there should be more pictures to come.