Irina’s First Beach Trip

Last week we went to the beach with some on my family and a few friends I haven’t seen in years.  It was a quick trip, and we didn’t stay long because it was one of the hottest days of summer we have had so far!  But it was long enough to have some fun in the sun!

(She got to come out and enjoy the sun for about a minute or two)

Beach

Nick is not much of a beach person, but since he loves his wife and children so very much he went with us to the beach yesterday.

It was gorgeous out!

Elijah is obsessed with footprints:

Elena would like to live at the beach:

This is how much Nick likes the beach:

Watching the waves:

Rescuing someone from the waves who turns out didn’t WANT to be rescued:

San Francisco Zoo

A couple months ago I won some tickets to the SF Zoo through their Twitter account.  Yes, laugh all you want that I tweet my thoughts to the world, but I have already won a couple of contests by using it.  And I never win ANYTHING.

Anyhow, back to the Zoo.  We have been telling Elijah for about a month now that we will go, but had to wait until Daddy was done with the school quarter.  Nick finished finals up last week, so yesterday we headed up to SF.  Elijah couldn’t have been more excited.  Elena knew we were going to see animals, but didn’t get the whole concept of the Zoo until we were there.  Once there, the both of them were unstoppable.  All focus was gone, Mom and Dad’s words were inaudible.  There were animals to be found!

Unbeknownst to me, Giraffes are Elena’s favorite animal.  I had no idea she even knew what they were.  But once we saw them, she said “hih-raff!” and didn’t want to move on.

The Gorillas were awesome, Hasani (the baby) was being quite the show off. Doing somersaults and all sorts of tricks for everyone.

(Side note: Ask Elena to say Gorilla. She gets a little stuck and it comes out “gor-ill-ill-ill-ill-a”. Super cute.)

Their Grizzly exhibit has to be one of their best. Or maybe it is just because the Grizzlies are so friendly. But every time I have gone, they will swim right up to the window to visit with you.

Elena WAS standing right up against the glass until the bear surprised her but popping up RIGHT THERE. Taking a step back made her all comfortable again.

This is me pouting because my children were refusing to take a picture with me. (Re: lack of focus)

This was the closest it came, and it only came after me grabbing them and begging them to stay with me.

Elena decided this was a better spot than her stroller:

(Side note: Notice the sagging pants? Yeah, I noticed that too. Once we got there. Now that she is in underwear her clothes don’t quite fit the same…oh well!)

My FAVORITE picture of the day. It perfectly speaks to the excitement the kids had.

My other favorite. Just look at that happiness!

They loved the petting zoo, that’s where ALL focus was completely lost. Such that Mommy and Daddy got very frustrated and that was the end of the Zoo trip.

But, the compromise was we would go look at the Giraffes just ONE MORE TIME before completely leaving:

Oak Meadow

Who of my readers remembers this park? It’s the one right next to Vasona, and I remember this being one of my favorite parks ever. We took the kids there the other week (on a weekend- oh man was it ever crazy!) and it still is quite the awesome park.

I remember trying to climb the outside of the plane too:

The Merry-Go-Round is still there (and I am very pregnant!):

Elijah lasted the whole ride this time, on previous occasions he has wanted off within seconds:

Where’s Elena?

There she is!

I don’t know what Elijah is saying, but his face cracks me up (oh yeah, and I’m PREGNANT!)

Wait Daddy, don’t look at the camera:

Cleaning Pays Off in More Than One Way!

This week I have had the cleaning bug, and have ended up focusing much of my time on the Garage since the kids like to be outside playing as often as possible. While organizing and shifting things around yesterday, I stumbled upon these beauties stashed under the filing cabinet:

I actually squealed with delight when I saw them! They have been missing for a year, and I have been racking my brain trying to figure out where they had ended up. Silly me obviously never thought to look under the filing cabinet in the garage. I have no idea how they got there, but finally, finally I can stop looking around my house every few days, and looking on the internet trying to find some Greek store that will mail handmade leather sandals to me. (For the record, those stores do exist, but charge about 3 times more than I paid AND the sandals are all ugly. I thought I would have to fly back to Greece to get more.)

Can you believe these shoes are 5 years old? When they weren’t lost, I would wear them every day in the summer, and quite often during the winter months as well. Such quality! I am so happy to have them back in my life.

Flashback Friday- Canons Ashby

After we left Peasenhall, we traveled to a little town called Canons Ashby (and yes, it was very little- smaller than Peasenhall even!).  We knew we were going to stay at an Estate out in the country, but were still completely taken by surprise at how wonderful it all was.

I am sorry in advance for how long this post is, I could NOT narrow down the pictures. I just have to show you all how wonderful this place is, and how incredible it is that we got to stay here for 5 days!

Here is the drive to our Estate, the Towers of Canons Ashby (Where the Dryden family once lived- John Dryden was the first Poet Laureate of England).  You can see how tiny the country roads are, and also our Estate coming into view!

Of course, we did not have access to the whole house- most of it is now a museum. We stayed in the Towers, which is tan colored part of the house (3 story part):

We were given a key to the whole house, through the door you see in the picture above. Once inside we had specific instructions on how to get to our apartment, otherwise we would set off the alarms. (Remember the rest of the house is a museum). Here is the first landing we went up:

We had a door at the top of this landing that we had a key to as well (We had particular fun when the museum was open going into our apartment and seeing how many other museum-goers tried to follow us through this forbidden door!). Once past this door, we were in the apartment which has stairs like this:

The first level was our bedroom, then up another flight of stairs to the living room, kitchen, and bathroom area:

Look at those windows! Look at that light! This may sound weird, but the bathroom was probably my favorite part of the house mainly because of the light and the windows.After that, there is the staircase up to the roof where you can view all of your estate! Here is my best recreation of the panoramic view we had (all of which was part of our land!)

All in all, there were 40 acres attached to the estate that we had unlimited access to! The museum portion of the house was only open from 1-5pm each day- so we just planned our sightseeing around that. We ended up not going out and about very much while staying here because it was just so peaceful and wonderful. We enjoyed exploring our grounds:

Taking walks:

And visiting the Church that was also on our property:

What an incredible place to honeymoon! I think we will always desire to go back here, I cannot express strongly enough the serenity and happiness that came with staying here. We didn’t even mind that we had to drive 10 minutes to get to any sort of place where you could purchase food! (Although the first night I did break down and cry because it was dark, we were lugging all our luggage up these flights of stairs, only to not be able to unlock one of the doors… after which point we left our luggage on the staircase, with me crying, and tried to find food. By 9pm all the pubs weren’t serving food anymore, so after 3/4 an hour of searching little town after little town, we found a place that had 24 hour take out Chinese in their pub. Once I had food in my stomach, I calmed down, and we prayed, we went back and tried again, and viola! The door opened just like that. After a rocky start, we had zero problems here).

Oh enough chatter! I think you all get the picture. I could swoon and go on about this place forever. What a memory we have to cherish!

Flashback Friday- Kenilworth

I know I posted some picture of Orford “castle” the other week- but that really is a Keep, not a Castle.  This is a real castle, and it’s size is absolutely impressive.

Built in 1120, many of England’s Kings lived or frequented here. It was important to control of the North, and was used against Kings as well (when bestowed upon faithful Barons who turned out to want an overthrow). It has the honor of surviving the longest siege in England’s history, due to being surrounded by 2 moats.

What a romantic place to see! All the stories come to life in a place like this. Check out the Archery Slit:

And the Great Room:

(I am standing in the basement, or servants quarters. The actual Great Room floor started right below the windows- notice that floating fireplace?)
Can you picture the parties that would have been thrown in this room? Amazing.

I believe this part of the Castle was built by John of Gaunt, who was recorded as the tallest man in England. Hence, he built these huge, beautiful windows that would dwarf even him.

Looks like an ordinary grassy knoll outside the Castle? Wrong. This is knoll Henry V used to hang out on. That’s right, you are looking at a picture of his thinking spot. He couldn’t go outside the Castle walls without a guard, so found this little spot for privacy.

Okay, this is not a special picture, but I am putting this up mostly for Erin (who should tell Scott).

Here they are working on recreating the Royal Gardens that were made specifically for Elizabeth I’s extended stay here (which visit is said to have inspired the then 11 year old Shakespeare’s vision of A Midsummer Night’s Dream). They are doing a sort of archeological reconstruction where they dig up roots that are shriveled and dead and identify them.

What a beautiful, romantic place with so much history! No wonder Sir Walter Scott wrote a novel about it!

Flashback Friday- Cambridge and Orford

While we stayed in Peasenhall, we took many day trips to the surrounding countryside. Within a short drive was Cambridge. The whole town of Cambridge is nothing special, it looks like every other town. The town itself is so incredibly busy, that you are encouraged to park outside, and take a bus in. Which is what we did. And I nearly had a heart attack. I am SO glad we didn’t drive in Cambridge. Sitting in the bus was nerve wracking enough- there is not enough room for cars and pedestrians and bikers to exist together, yet they try. Nick actually knows someone who was standing on a sidewalk in Cambridge and got clipped on the shoulder by a bus.

Anyway, once we got to the University part, it was lovely and relaxing- walking and biking only. Oh, and punting of course!

I feel like this is the best way to view the campus, it was so much fun and you get all the pertinent info from your punter/guide who is a usually a current student there. All the buildings are gorgeous. GORGEOUS. And then there were things like this bridge:
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Flashback Friday- Peasenhall

I liked my sister Erin’s Flashback Honeymoon Month so much, that I decided to do my own for the month of April.  Since it’s Nick and my anniversary month, I will be posting pictures from our Honeymoon as well!

We went to England for our Honeymoon, and stayed in a couple Landmark Trust buildings.  We couldn’t have been happier with the accommodations!  Anyone who travels to The British Isles should try and stay in one of their lodgings… an absolutely amazing experience.

Our first stop was in a little town called Peasenhall.  Our house was called The New Inn, a 15th Century Inn.

Our part was on the left side of the picture, the middle is a grand hall, and then there are 2 more apartments on the right side.  All of this is connected to a Tea House, which we went to at least once a day.  (Cream Tea is Nick’s favorite, and he would have been happy eating that exclusively during our trip).

This town was truly tiny!  There is a market about the size of the Corralitos Market, a pub, and a Post Office.  Otherwise I don’t think there was much besides houses and a Church or 2.  The pub had excellent food which we ate our first night there. We got in late and were there with one other couple. They asked us to sit with them, so we did and had a lovely chat over dinner. We learned about farming, and the difficulties the VAT tax is putting on them, and how much they love Americans out in Peasanhall because nearby there used to be a Military Base and the area was thriving when people were stationed there.

We loved it!  Went on country walks every day, and were within driving distance of Cambridge, Bury St. Edmonds, and Orford (an awesome seaside town). Oh, but it DID have the classic phone booth in town!

Our bedroom:

View from the house:

Check out the driveway, I love it!

Driving on the wrong side of the road and sitting on the wrong side of the car… It was quite the experience. We got used to it by day 2, but with staying out in the country one thing we NEVER got used to was the fact that country roads do NOT have enough room for 2 cars to drive past each other. Locals are used to driving off into the grass to make room, and do so without slowing down or blinking.

There was a lovely Vineyard down the road where we went wine tasting:

Only a little farther was the town of Framlingham which had a beautiful Castle:

We loved the quiet pace of the countryside, the friendly people, and the food.  All the pubs we went to in England (that’s mostly where we ate) had terrific food!

Visitors and Wilder Ranch

I missed my weekend poll last week because we had out-of-town guests staying with us. They have 2 daughters close in age to our kids and so the house was busy busy busy with lots of laughter and playing. We took a trip out to Wilder Ranch, and got lucky that there was also a school group there. (Normally I wouldn’t think that was lucky, but because they were there it was a living history day!). So the kids got to see the goats up close (one out on a leash), saw the horse and carriage, the blacksmith, played with the bubbles, etc. Usually during the week all that stuff is put away! We took tons and tons of pictures, so if you want to see them all just click on one of the pictures and it will take you to the picasa album.

Elena was fascinated by the “goaks”:

All the kids- Lilly & Grace, and Elijah & Elena:

Elijah and Lilly thought it would be a great idea to try and climb this tree…

Their confusion when we told them NO:

The kids watching the horses: