CLICK HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES »

Saturday, September 30, 2017

Spaghetti Sauce

We did not have a garden this year knowing that Kory and I were leaving the country for a few weeks. We have really missed not having those fresh vegetables around. I went to the red barn to buy apples and discovered a few cases left of tomatoes that would be perfect to turn into spaghetti sauce.  Early Saturday morning we started this big project. Everyone helped! 
Emily working the grinder.

Kylie helped the skins come out the end with a wooden spoon. 


Emilys turn cutting while Madelyn takes her turn at the crusher. 

Hunter helped me cut up the onions. Our eyes were watering so bad! He disappeared for a moment and came back wearing his swim goggles. He wouldn't let me take a pict so this was the best I got. He said it helped some!


Kory and Brayden helped by setting up our outdoor grill and tables. When they were up and ready they too took turns cutting up tomatoes and helping grind them all down. 

In the end we had just over 70 jars of homemade spaghetti sauce! Not to bad for a Saturday.

Friday, September 29, 2017

Emily turns 11

This sweet girl turned 11!

All she wanted was the game called "Killer Bunnies". This game was taught to our family a few years ago by Aunt Sheri and Uncle Jason. The kiddo's stayed with them on the weekend while Kory and I were gone in the UK. These kiddo's asked to play this game almost daily! She loves it!


Besides the game she specifically asked for some new clothes,especially Halloween clothes. Little Miss got her wish!


Such a sweet girl!
Love you Miss Emily!

Home Coming Week

My little's love, love, love homecoming week. They wear the high school colors red and black and we get to face paint. Then during school lunch the high school football team and cheerleaders eat lunch with the kids and plays with them outside. After lunch the whole school gets to go outside and sit along with the sidewalk and watch every single group/team you can be apart of in high school go past them during a small parade.    


Brayden came home super excited! He challenged a football player at recess to see who could do the most push ups! Brayden won!! I hope Brayden will grow up to be just as kind and considerate as the young man who "lost" the challenge. It totally made my little man's day! 

Go Tigers....... 

Kylie didn't want face paint, nor did she want her picture taken. However, she did let me apply a little paint to her hand. Then a friend who was helping with the kindergarten class during the parade sent me this picture. Yay! I got one of her anyways. Little stinker! 

Love that my kiddo's love to participate at school. 

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Bristol Blue

Wednesday, Sept 6th,  was our last day to play tourist!
And even then it was only 1/2 a day. We had a flight to catch early that afternoon from Bristol back to Edinburgh. Then tomorrow morning at 8 am we checked in at the airport to begin our long flight home! Yippee! We had been gone for 17 days. We were both ready to go home. 

Neither one of us was interested in seeing another castle or cathedral or museum. We wanted to see something different. The night before Kory discovered the perfect place. It was called Bristol Blue Glass. A manufacturer who allows people into his shop to watch the process. Best part was that it was free and we were able to park right in front of the shop for free too! 


Watching their process was so cool to see. This woman was working on an order of glass Christmas bulbs. She probably made 5 keepers from start to finish in the 1 1/2 hours we were there. One of her bulbs burst in the oven, another one of them came out with a hole on the side and it seems like another one was just lopsided and wasn't cooperating so she threw the hardening glass back into the fire. .  

This young man was making fluted glasses/goblets.  

This young man was helping with the ornaments and the fluted glasses. When he gets the round shape he likes he blows into the end of his stick which blows air into the center of the hot glass creating a glass bubble. Then he shapes the bubble again working back and forth until he gets the size and shaped wanted. When it's the size wanted they use a sharp knife to "pop" the end of the bubble. Thus making it a goblet or an ornament.   

The top part of the goblet is done. Now another worker brings him a hot glob of clear glass. They touch and the hot glass just kind of sticks to the red glass.  He molds it to be part of the future flute of the goblet. 


Now he's adding the bottom of the fluted piece, the stand for the goblet. This goblet had a total of 3 different pieces of hot glass . Once it's all put together then it goes into the fire. 

Bristol Blue Glass several years ago was contracted to make some of the goblets in the Harry Potter movies. Their store shows the "extras" that were made for the order and pictures of the Harry Potter scenes that used the goblets. Kind of cool!  

After our fun visit we headed back to our hotel and packed our things. Drove to the airport, dropped off our rental car and began our long journey home!



Good Bye car!

After an 11+ hour flight home the next day, followed by the drive home. 
We finally made it home!
This sweet girl was so excited to have her mom back.  


She even talked her Dad into walking her into her class room. Best picture ever! Taken with a crappy 
cell phone camera through the windshield while raining outside. 
But it's one of my favorites!


We had fun! 
We saw amazing things. Saw. read and learned amazing history. It gave me the "bug" to travel more and see our world.  I am so glad we were able to take this trip, to learn a little more about where I come from.  
Now it's time to spend some time at home making our own little history. 

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Roman Baths

Tuesday, September 5th. We drove from Bristol to Bath which was only about a 30 min drive. The hardest part was once again finding a dang parking lot to park in. Only residents of the homes on the other side of the wall are allowed to park on the street or apparently the sidewalk. 


We have seen so many castles, cathedrals and old historic buildings that I wasn't to excited to see the Roman Baths. However, I was pleasantly surprised! We saw and touched some amazing artifacts. It really was pretty cool to see. 



After we paid our entrance fee we were asked to climb the stairs to the very top and work our way down. So at the top we were able to look over into the baths. 


Above us, also looking down into the baths were many statues of elite soldiers and conquers that played an important part in History. 

  

This is what the Romans Bath looked like at one point. 

This was part of an entryway.

 We saw a lot of interesting and super old artifacts! 

 It's hard to believe that these Roman Bath's are so old!
There were 8 bags of money found buried in a corner that are now on display.  

Amazing! 
These coins were on the earth before Christ. 
Wow!


This is a real skeleton remain found in a wooden coffin that had been made from wood. The wood coffin had decayed and was not salvageable to be put on display. However the cloth inside the coffin can be seen under his remains.  Using today's science a replica of what this man would have looked like can be seen. Awesome! 

 Possible worshiping statues, water and oil pitchers, plates, utensils all found either in the Roman Bath or in this specific area.  

The natural warm springs comes in one side and fills up 2 main pools. 


At one point the pools and saunas could be used by any sex, male or female. But do to the frolicking that accured in the pools they were eventually separated. One was designated for females,the other males.  
Next to each pool was a sauna. At one time there would have been slabs of rock on top of all those stacks of hot rock. Boiler's built under ground would keep these rooms super hot. With the boilers and the natural warm water running between all the stacks of rock it became quite the sauna inside. 



Leaving the building we were able to have some fresh hot water from the spring.  
 It tasted minerally and very warm!

After leaving the baths, we did a little grocery shopping for breakfast and wandered around town. 
This sign was taped to a front door. 
Does it really work?

The driving/parking here cracks me up!

Most of the time people are parked on the side of the road but also on the sidewalk. And they aren't parked facing the direction of the flow of traffic. 

Every once in a while on the highway we'll a passing lane.


Then there's this guy who apparently is passing the parked car but then we watched him continue to drive on that dotted line until an oncoming car came and made him get back into his own lane. 

 Then you've got these cars who park in front of homes on the grass. 
Weird! 
Several times we have passed a bus who has pulled over to let it's passengers off or to collect more people. The surrounding cars don't STOP, so they don't even slow down! They just drive around the bus. Meanwhile people are crossing the road ON the cross walk with cars swerving around them. It's really crazy to see. 

Monday, September 25, 2017

King Aurthur's Castle

Before leaving Cornwall on Monday we made a stop at Tintagel Castle aka King Aurthur's Castle and Merlins Cave. This ended up being one of my favorite places we saw during our trip. It was also one of our hardest too. I don't know how many miles we walked because most if it was up and down uneven surfaces, steep climbs and rocky terrain but it was so worth it.

In the parking lot we saw this camper van.

I had never seen anything like it before. 

Flower power!

Grazing Cows.

From the parking lot we passed several rock walls and hedges.
Look at that design!


Kind of pretty! 

After walking a mile from town we finally arrived at the entrance. We then walked another steep 1/2 mile down to where all the fun began.  Behind me and down some stairs is the entrance to Merlin's Cave. 



Inside Merlin's cave. 

Adjacent to Merlin's Cave on the beach is a beautiful waterfall.


Standing on the beach and trying to take it all in. This is most definetley not what we see on our beaches in California. 


Kids would have loved to explore here! All the little caves to play in. 

After I got my "fill" of the ocean waves we started our climb up! 
Midway we came upon the beginning of the many ruins. 


From these ruins up and up we went!

What I hoped was more than half way up I took a picture of just a portion of what we had already walked up!


Up and up we kept going. The platform in the picture below is where we were standing when I took the above picture. If we hung a left it took us up to more ruins of the castle. We hung a right and went up and up and up to get to the statue of King Arthur!

And we finally made it to the top!

Pretty awesome!


So beautiful.





After catching our breathe and just taking the beauty in we began our descend down, down, down!

We finally made it down to the bottom. The whole trail you are surrounded by beauty!


A pretty little stream running downhill. 



After leaving King Aurthor's we finished our journey to Bristol.

That night we were hungry and Kory was wanting Tai. After a few google searches we came upon a restaurant named Giggling Squid. 

It was so good to see my red curry sauce looked very similar to what we have back home.  
So yummy!


 Walking back to our car where we had to park in a designated parking lot we passed a park with this phone booth. It had been painted for a charity event in 2013. After the event it had been moved to the Windsor Castle to be on display. After being there for a bit it is now being moved from park to park as an Art piece. Pretty cool to be able to see and touch it. It still amazes me that we have seen so little graffiti. It's awesome to see the respect shown in Scotland and England.  I'm afraid if this art piece was back home, in a park with no security it wouldn't last long! Which really is so sad!