Olympics Brunch

A little late, but I wanted to share the yummyness that was our Olympics-inspired brunch with the amazing Byers family. Last Saturday we co-hosted them with our housemates, the McKenneys. 

Menu: Cullen and Pamela's Christmas breakfast casserole, croissants, grits with cheese and bacon toppings, fruit salad, juice/coffee/tea.

The gorgeous Byers family with my Pinterest-inspired American flag fruit kebabs

Lesson to be learned: Brunch is the key to hosting families with small kids. I feel like it is too stressful for all involved to have families with young ones over for dinner. Most parents know that just before dinner is the witching hour, kids are sometimes picky eaters, and the littles really do better at home in their own routine in the evenings before bed. Behold, brunch! There is something for everyone to eat, breakfast foods are cheap, and all are happy after a night's sleep. Yaaay!

Olympic Park and Ride and Dartmouth

On our drive from the Isle of Wight to Dartmouth in Devon (on the Southwest coast of England), we saw signs for Weymouth, where the Olympic sailing and rowing was. I got so excited that I had to take pictures of flags at roundabouts.

Does it still freak you out that the steering wheel is on the right side of the car?

It turns out that we were near an Olympic park-and-ride. It's not the most exciting thing ever, but I was really pumped.

Olympic flags

A few hours later we were on a ferry across the River Dart to Dartmouth, where John Flavel (the man Nathan's PhD is based on) lived and ministered.

It was gorgeous! It reminded me of Switzerland and San Francisco and England rolled into one.

This was our bed and breakfast, Hill View House. It was so sweet!

I took these pictures after we checked out, so the bed is not so smooth. The breakfast was the highlight of our stay. GORGEOUS fruit and granola presentation. I'm kicking myself for not hiking up three flights of stairs to get the camera before tearing into mine.

We explored Dartmouth on Sunday night and Monday morning. Lots to see, including a ship made of edible materials, like a pretzel mast.

Cool building

Lots of flowers were in bloom. It was so picturesque!

We did not go up these stairs. Thank you, Jesus.

Hardly anything was open for dinner on Sunday night, but we stopped into this restaurant, Kendricks. We actually got a free appetizer (a first in England!), but there were only ten chips and two tablespoons of mediocre salsa. See above. It had not been modified at all. Oh, and Nathan got caught posing like this by our waitress.

So, the meals were actually awesome. We take back our naughty picture above. The next two photos are dedicated to two Whitefield students who are not related to each other and both have the last name Kendrick.

When he was in 6th grade, John Kendrick told me I had a five o'clock shadow without actually knowing what that meant. See my insecure pose above. From what I recall, he backpedaled, saying that it meant I looked like I had chapped lips. Too late, buddy. Too late. 

Mary Kendrick always bounced into my classroom in the mornings with wide, excited eyes. She was bursting at the seams to tell me a story, usually about how her suicidal guinea pig tried to hurl itself off the second floor balcony.

More pictures of the river and sail boats and my handsome husband

After his sailing experience with Sam, Nathan really wanted to buy "a sailing shirt." The one above I loved, but he thought it was too nondescript.

We spend hours wandering in and out of shops, but we just couldn't justify buying one at 40 pounds, even if it was half off. Gulp.

This one was a "no" too.

Thankfully, we struck gold in Newcastle charity shop, and he got a rowing shirt, a rugby shirt, and a football shirt for about ten pounds. More on that later... after I wash them. :)

Tomorrow's post will really excited you history nerds out there. Prepare yourself for all things Flavel!

Her Majesty's Summer House

On the day of the opening ceremonies, there was some rain expected for the morning, so we decided to go to Osborne House. Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their nine children retreated there in the summers. Again, it was one of those places where no one was allowed to take pictures inside, so there are a lot of outdoor shots. However - and, again - it was totally worth the price of admission. 

Our gracious hosts, Sam and Jen

My strong husband

Overlooking the gardens

One side of the house

Supporting Team USA on the day of the opening ceremonies

Edgers would be too noisy, so the gardeners use scissors with long levers.

The Swiss Cottage near the beach is where the children played and gardened.

There were even play bunkers and cannons!

We were there the first day the beach was opened up to the public.

To celebrate, there was a brass band playing old time-y music.

Cool old tree

A cork tree. I'd never seen one before. It must have made posting signs on the trunk easy.

The view of Nathan's head and most of the house.

Next up... a barbecue on the beach and sailing gone wrong.

Gone Sailing

So, on my Summer 2012 hit-list was seeing the white cliffs of Dover, which was on it because I thought we were going there. We weren't. However, we did see some white chalk cliffs, which means I checked the box with pride.

And here they are. 

This is on the eastern coast of the Isle of Wight (I think). I can't remember the name of the beach, unfortunately. It was such a blessing to have island native Sam choose the activities and drive us around everywhere, but it meant that I can't remember the names of all the places we went. I think the positives way outweigh the negatives on this one.

Here is beautiful Jen manning our little sand patch. The fabric thing on sticks behind her is called a wind break. I couldn't figure out what it was for, and then she said, "This is what the English are usually huddled behind in horrible weather on the beach so we don't get sand in our sandwiches." I think it's also meant to provide shade, but we had the sun directly overhead for most of our time there. We Americans have umbrellas for the sun, and we don't stick around for wind storms on the beach.

And now for the main event... sailing! Nathan was so, so excited about sailing with Sam. He read two books about sailing before we left for our trip, and he talked about it multiple times a day. Sam is a great sailor and a great teacher, and they had a lot of fun. 

Here's my sailor and his knotted rope.

Sam's parents are expert sailors who race and enjoy their boat several times a week, and they very generously let us use their Wayfarer a couple times.

Off they go! When they got back, he was boasting about his tacking and jiving (which is actually supposed to be jibing) and how he used the toe strap and hung out the side of the boat to balance it. He's pretty much Ben Ainslie now, who is the most bad#$% sailor ever. I loved watching him in the Olympics. 

Basically, two guys teamed up on him and said he hit a buoy, which meant he had to take a penalty turn and lose the lead. However, he had the last word when he won the gold medal in the Finn class a few days later. He's won medals (one silver and four golds) at each of the last five Olympics. Nathan accused me of having a crush on Ben Ainslie, and I didn't deny it. Whatever. He has a huge crush on Christy Brinkley that I don't bug him about. 

The boys talked me and Jen into sailing around the harbor a little. I was so, so, so nervous. The water was cold. I left my insulin pump with Nathan because I didn't want it to short and break if I went overboard. That would have been... *shudder* disastrous. A funny little difference in vocabulary: life jackets are called buoyancy aids.

I can now say that I had fun, but I won't be doing it again. 

Coming back to safety!

After our sailing adventures, we enjoyed the best burgers in all of England from the sailing clubhouse. What a gorgeous night!

Next up, we visit Queen Victoria's summer house. Coolness!

My Olympic Tour

It was the first day of our vacation, and I was PUMPED. I planned to go on a tour of the Olympic sites with a friend from Bakersfield, Shannon. Nathan wanted to go to a used book store. Geneva Books is actually 30,000 volumes of theology and church history in the charmingly eccentric Colonel Underwood's house. We  took off from Durham at eight in the morning with the vision to part ways for the afternoon. My tour was at 2:15. Surely it wouldn't take more than six hours to get to London, right? Wrong.

Driving in London is so stressful. We flew down to the outskirts of the city in about four hours, and then we sat in traffic for more than two. The heat was stifling, and we don't have air conditioning in our car. We weren't moving. We kept seeing signs for congestion charges. We heard that you can be charged for bringing a car into high congestion areas. You don't pay a toll, but they do send you a bill to your house. We heard it was about ten pounds a day, which we were fine with paying. 

Spoiler alert: It's actually 60 pounds a day, and we had the car there overnight, which means we were charged 120 pounds. Oh, and Nathan got a parking ticket in Westminster, which was another 40. Moral of the story: Do not drive in London. Just don't.

Back to the story... I was stressing out that I was going to miss my tour! Finally, I jumped out of the car at a red light, found a Tube station, and arrived at the appropriate stop (West Ham) in East London about fifteen minutes late. The good news was that I was able to catch up with the group because Shannon was keeping an eye on them for me. 

The bad news is that she couldn't stay. We said hello, got this picture, hugged a big hug, and then we said goodbye.

This was our guide. I was the hottest I've ever been since moving to England. Like... sweating. Bad. This guy's shirt was completely soaked by the end of the tour, but he insisted on wearing the blazer and everything. He needed his pockets, you see. You can see the ring of sweat about down to his second button in this picture, taken about 30 minutes into the tour. By the end, the sweat ring was down to his belly button.

As he was talking about the area, loads of port-a-pottys were being brought in for the Olympics. I think they're called port-a-loos here. They all had zip ties on the doors, so we couldn't use them. The first hour of the tour was a little disappointing. We just traipsed around back roads and looked at sewage pipes and things. All of the good stuff was blocked off for security reasons, so it probably would have been better to do the tour of the Olympic sites several months ago. However, it got better the second hour...

Here we are at the Prime Meridian. Greenwich Mean Time can be seen here if you just stand in the center, like a sun dial.

The Olympic Village! Actually, this is outside the Olympic Village. On the other side of the pink thing, there were athletes singing "We Are the Champions" with a live band.

In the background are the apartment buildings where the athletes and coaches and officials are staying, all 17,000 of them. Can you see the flags of the people who have moved in already? In the foreground are lots and lots and lots and lots of security tents.

This is a better view from the steps of a new mall.

Woohoo!

This is John Lewis, the anchor store at this brand new mall. It. is. fabulous. On the top floor is an official Olympics store. We ended the tour there, and I got treats for my contest winners, my dad and Melissa R.

This is the view from the third floor of the department store. See what I mean about the security tents?

And here's a portrait of the queen made out of jelly beans. I told you it was a cool department store.

From the department store I had to take the train/Tube back to Westminster, where we were staying the night. It was so crowded. I'm realizing more and more that I'm just not a city mouse. It was an electric atmosphere. Everyone was excited to be there, which was really cool. However, it felt like all the tourists were lost and taking pictures every five steps. Everyone moved very slowly, and no one spoke English.

This was taken two days before the Olympics even started. I can't imagine how crowded it must be right now.

Here's the view from my first train. Cool, huh?

Because I joined the tour after everyone had paid, I didn't even think about forking over my nine pounds for the two-hour tour until we were in John Lewis, at which time I lost our guide in a sea of people. I am officially a criminal. But after what London did to us in parking tickets and congestion charges, I don't really feel that bad. 

There is so, so much more to come on our holiday down South. My computer is being a little frustrating right now, but I promise I'll keep working on things until it's all been documented. Stay tuned!