Gratefully Twitterpated: Jolly Old England

Wow, it happened. Our whole family went to England. It was a dream come true. I love, love, love England. I don't know if it is because of all the visits I made when I was a child or from living there a couple of different times, but it feels so much like home and there is such a feeling of love and comfort when I am over there. I like to think it is my English blood and ancestors that draw me to England. I hope that I can make it over there again some day. It is just too depressing to think of this as possibly my last visit to England.

Friday - June 24, 2016

So with traveling and an 8 hour time difference it technically took us two days to get to England. We left on Wednesday morning from Spokane, Washington and made it to London, England on Thursday evening. It was quite an exhausting trip!

It was so nice to wake up (or at least lay in bed) as long as we wanted with no specific agenda for Friday. My uncle Richard (with whom we stayed with most of our trip) had some time off of work early on in the day and so he took us just a few block away from his house to the large park. The park is so green and typical of England. On one far end there is a cricket club, then there are just fields and fields of green grass, a field with exercise equipment and then another end with a track and tennis courts. Among all of this is a small river and pond where people can go fishing and where there are birds and ducks a plenty.

It just so happened that the week before we came it had rained and rained and rained. What in England? you say?!! Yes, but more than usual and a lot of flooding had occurred. So instead of a nice leisurely walk around the park and a safe place for Chad and Halle to run, it turned into quite the adventure. Some of the pathways were buried in muddy puddles and all the grass was boggy and soggy. The river and pond had escaped their natural bank boundaries and there was water everywhere.

After coming home from our adventurous walk we had some lunch. Then Chris and I took off for our next adventure. When we picked up our rental car from Heathrow airport the day before it was supposed to be a van, but instead they provided us with a 7 passenger car (7 very small passengers). So my dad arraigned for us to replace the rental at a smaller and closer airport (Stansted). So Chris and I drove all the way to Stansted just to be offered another 7 passenger car, only this one was slightly smaller. After being disappointed yet again we drove back to my Uncle's house. So that took a couple of hours out of our afternoon. (And we did this all without a navigation system. Just advice from my uncle and Chris' awesome navigation skills with our English map.)

Towards evening we decided to go grocery shopping. We went into Loughton's shopping center (just the town north of Buckhurst Hill where we were staying). There we were able to find a "Car Phone Warehouse" where we purchased a cheap English cell phone for emergencies (as our new phones we just purchased for our trip ended up not working in England like they were supposed to).

Then we went into Morrison's. It is a large grocery chain over there. It was so fun to take the whole family and show them all the different foods and the price in pounds. We got some food for dinner and lots and lots of English treats and chocolate (I love English food!). Then it was back to Richard's for dinner and to plan out our next day into London.

Sean giving the ducks a thumbs up. The water should be back at least 6 feet. The railing that the ducks are sitting on is part of an observation deck that has been flooded.

Richard leading the way through our soggy, boggy walk in the flooded fields. Stepping down was a strange, springy, noisy experience. We were trying to walk on the least flooded parts!