Mom and Norm's First Visit

Last week my mom and my step-dad, Norm, arrived on Sunday morning (May 2) from Ohio. This was their first time to the UK, so I was very excited to show them our new home, including our first house, driving on the "other" side of the road, using "strange" words such as "lorry", "rubbish" and "ta", and just the lovely scenery that we're surrounded by.

On Sunday, we took it easy so they could recover from the trip over; however, we did make an exciting trip to Sainsbury. I showed them the bakery in which I start working next week.

On Monday, we drove out to Much Marcle to take a tour around Westons Cider, just as Jeff and I did back in September. While waiting for the tour to begin, we had a tea break in the cafe. During the tour, it poured buckets on us, and our tour guide just kept talking as we attempted to stay dry. Luckily, as if God turned off the water faucet, rain stopped. The tour was just as entertaining and as informative as I remembered it being. The tour finished off with a cider tasting... so refreshing.

Mom and Norm in the cafe.

During the tour just as the downpour was starting to subside...

...and only moments later the sun was shining and the birds were chirping.

Mom reaching for a taste of cider.

On Tuesday, we went to Bath, which was also my first time there. The Roman Baths are the main attraction in the city, although there are many more things to see and do in Bath. The tour of the Roman Baths was fantastic. Each of us were given hand sets to carry around for our own personal tour of the baths. There were even comments by Bill Bryson to listen to.

View of the Great Bath from the terrace around it.

View of Bath Abbey from the Roman Baths

Worshipers to the baths would pray to the goddess Sulis Minerva.
This is the head of the statue they would have prayed to.

After the baths, we ate lunch at Sally Lunn's Refreshment House: "Sally Lunn's is the oldest house in Bath (c.1482) and serves the most famous local delicacy; the Original Sally Lunn Bun. Sally Lunn, a French refugee, arrived 1680 and established her bakery. Today Sally Lunn's serve a menu based on the world famous Sally Lunn Bun during the day and are open for fine English food in the evening. Museum open daily, showing the original kitchen she used."

My bun as a turkey and bacon sandwich

Half of a bun with clotted cream and jam

It was a good thing that we had time to walk around the city after lunch!

The Pulteney Bridge over the River Avon

The Royal Crescent

On Wednesday, we drove into the Cotswolds and stopped in 3 villages: Broadway, Stow-on-the-Wold and Bourton-on-the Water.

Beautiful wisteria growing on the side of a store in Broadway

Twenty baby duckies in Bourton-on-the-Water.
I was trying to persuade Jeff to take one for me, but he wouldn't do it.

On Thursday, we took a tour of Gloucester, led by Val Etherton, a member of our church.

On Friday, we decided to stay home for the day, though we did make a few errands.

On Saturday, we drove over to Caerphilly Castle in Wales. It was a cold and windy, so it wasn't the best day for walking around a mostly open-air castle. Caerphilly Castle is/was one of the largest medieval castles in western Europe.

One week is never enough time with family, but we look forward to having Mom and Norm visit in the future, as well as many more (perhaps you!) visitors in the future.

Tewkesbury Food Festival

For my birthday, Jeff bought us tickets to the Tewkesbury Food and Drink Festival, which we went to today! It was very similar to the cheese festival we went to in Cardiff in September; small, local companies set up stands in a large tent where they sell their specialty food and drinks.

Tewkesbury Abbey

The festival was set up behind where I took this picture.

The first stand we came to - gorgeous cupcakes, or "fairy cakes" as their often called here.
(But we didn't even buy one!)

Jeff's nose led him to a stand selling grilled sausages in a bun - he chose a pork and black pudding one. We then went into the large food tent where vendors were selling such things as sausages, puddings, chutneys, beers and the like, ice creams, sweets and produce. We bought 2 kinds of sausage, 3 puddings ("black and blue", ginger and spotted dick), a fish pie, asparagus, smoked, dried ham (like proscuitto), a bottle of ale, a small wheel of creamy cheddar cheese and ginger sweets.

We then went to a food demonstration, though it wasn't exactly entertaining. We then ate lunch...

Jeff about to devour his ostrich burger.

I'm about to dig into my zebra burger... I guess a burger can be made out of any kind of meat... not that I even knew zebra meat is edible.

After we had our burgers, we looked at a few more stands, then decided we had done enough damage, so we headed to the car with numerous bags in hand.

This was a beautiful, yellow bush that was near our car in the car park. So pretty.

Tomorrow morning, my mom and step-dad will arrive from Ohio (Lord willing)! This will be their first trip to the UK. Mom is very excited; she says she has wanted to visit England ever since the "British invasion", so about 45 years ago. We're definitely looking forward to their arrival.

Thanks Volcano!

The most unusual thing happened two weeks ago - all flights in and out of the UK were canceled for 6 days due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland. This meant lots of travellers couldn't leave nor get back to the UK for 6 days. One of the "stranded" travellers was Bronnie! She had been staying in London with her sister and was supposed to return on Sunday. Monday morning I received an email from her asking if I wanted a visitor. So, I picked her up at the bus station Monday evening. Tuesday we went to my church's women's meeting, then to the Gilmore's for lunch, then to the Gloucester Cathedral and Beatrix Potter's Tailor of Gloucester Shop.

Wednesday we drove out to Cirencester, where we went into the church, bought 6 pieces of chocolate to share (a tradition for us), browsed through numerous small shops and had lunch. Unfortunately, she had to take the bus that afternoon back to London, as the planes were allowed to fly again and her flight was the next morning.

It was such a treat to have her all to myself for a couple days.

Two Days Out

Saturday, Jeff and I met up with an acquaintance of ours who we met in Munich 4 years ago. Sam Davis had been working for 3 months in Munich and attended MICC, which is how we met. Through the wonders of Facebook, Sam got in touch with me and wanted to meet up before he moves back to Munich in May. He currently lives just outside Oxford, so not too far from us.

Jeff and I are constantly amazed at the beauty of the Cotswolds, which is the hill region near which we live. On our drive to the Chedworth Roman Villa to meet Sam, we drove down a country road, through a little town and came to this field with a stream and many sheep and their frolicking lambs , but unfortunately, they're hard to see in this picture. The scenery reminded me of Psalm 23.
Once we met Sam, we drove to a nearby restaurant for lunch and then went back to the villa to take a look around. The Chedworth Roman Villa, a Nation Trust property, is one of Britain's best examples of a Romano-British villas with well preserved remains of Roman baths and mosaics.

Jeff and Sam standing near the villa's latrine

The Latrines
The Victorian Shooting Lodge in the background now houses the villa museum.

The kitchen and the dining room have mosaics depicting the four seasons.

The West Bath House had heated chambers,
whereas the the North Bath House had cold water baths.

The Heated Living Room had pillars (seen here) that held up the floor while hot air from an attached fire room circulated between the pillars to heat the floor and room above.

Sam during our "much-needed" break

The pheasant wandering around his garden. I hadn't seen a pheasant up close before, so I had to take a picture. He was actually quite pretty with many different colours of feathers.

After finishing at the villa, we drove up the road to Northleach to find a tea room, with no success, but we did find a cafe to finish up discussing Munich matters.

The streets were lined with houses and buildings made from Cotswold stone

The town also has "one of the finest Cotswold wool churches", the Church of St Peter and St Paul. "The church has been called 'The Cathedral of the Cotswolds', and with good reason. It seems at first glance quite odd that a small town like Northleach would possess such an extraordinary church, but the fact is easily explained with a little dose of history. In the medieval period the Cotswold region was famous for the quality of the wool it produced. So prized was this wool that many wool merchants became fabulously wealthy by the standards of their time. Some of this wealth was lavished on their local churches."

Yesterday afternoon, Jeff and I decided to drive over to the west side of the Severn River into the Forest of Dean. Just before driving into the forest, we stopped at the Westbury Court Garden, another National Trust property. This garden is "the finest example of a Dutch style water garden in the country", "was originally laid out between 1696 and 1715" and appears as it would have at its best in 1720.

Jeff under a 400-year old oak tree

Snake's Head Fritillary

Beautiful, unusual flowers

Summer snow drops

Me in an ornamental garden

Cute bunny

Jeff by a canal
Fountain at the base of a canal with the pavilion in the background

Early Spring

The weather has finally begun to warm up, the time has "sprung" forward and the evenings are lighter... it must be spring! I love spring. Everywhere I look, daffodils have popped up and tulips are just beginning to bloom. Last weekend we bought a lawn mower, unlike any I've seen before, but a lawn mower nevertheless. It doesn't have wheels, but hovers above the ground when it turns on - perfect for our patch of grass in the garden.

So I thought I'd catch you up on the last couple of weeks of our lives. Our main focus has been to get the cars in proper working order again, but I won't even start on that never-ending story.

While I was in Ohio, I bought Martin Gamston, a friend from church, what I like to call a "proper" sweatshirt, a.k.a. an Ohio State sweatshirt. When I first met him, he was wearing a sweatshirt with the name of the state up north on it (we all know which state I mean), and I told him that that would have to change. He bought the sweatshirt at an outlet mall somewhere near London and just liked the color of it and that it had a hood. It was more of a joke than anything, I didn't want to offend his choice of clothing... but once a Buckeye, always a Buckeye... Martin wearing the beautiful OSU sweatshirt and Matt Gamston modeling the old, tattered, dark blue (I won't even mention the state) sweatshirt.

Two weeks ago, I celebrated my 29th birthday. After church, Jeff and I went to Toby Carvery for lunch. A carvery is sort of like a buffet in that you serve yourself and you pick what you want, but it's limited to one trip up to the "buffet", which is fine because as you can see from the picture, we weren't going to starve! On my plate is lamb with mint sauce, turkey with cranberry sauce, beef with horseradish sauce, peas and carrots, cauliflower, two roast potatoes, a stuffing ball, and the star of the show, a Yorkshire pudding with a drizzle of gravy. Yum-o!
After our hearty lunch, we drove over to the Painswick Beacon, which is "250 acres of common land, which offers some excellent views across the Severn Valley. On the top of the beacon the outlines of a large Iron Age hill fort can be seen. The fort covers 7 acres and is triangular in shape. Double banks and ditches on three sides provided defenses to the fort, while the steep slope on the north-east side meant that a single ditch sufficed there. In the centre of the fort is a deep circular depression. It was first thought that this was a well, but it seems more likely to have been made for some ritual purposes."
We had beautiful views of the Severn River, Gloucester, and the Malverns that day.

For Easter, I made lemon and thyme chicken, roasted carrots, asparagus salad with blue cheese vinaigrette, Parmesan and thyme rolls, and lemon meringue pie.