May Day in Hasting

As Brian got the first Monday in May off we decided to go to Hastings in hopes of seeing a May Day Celebration. We headed off on Saturday morning and on our way stopped at Hever Castle, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn. They were having a bit of a May Day celebration here as well. We learned a little about Tudor times and Anne and King Henry VIII hosted the day. It was a fun visit as we walked around the grounds and had a picnic. I even had a duck take a bite of my sandwich.

On Sunday we went to yet another castle, Bodiam Castle, which a rich soldier built to impress his friends and any French that may think to attack!!! It has this great moat with some of the biggest fish we have even seen. Brian even thinks he saw the fish eating the ducks, instead of the other way around. Brian decided that he wants a house like this so he can go out the front door and catch dinner.

We then went to Battle to see the field where the battle of 1066 took place. The field is just a pasture for sheep so I didn't even take a picture of it. This is part of the Abbey ruins that was built by William the Conquerer to commemorate winning the battle.

This is the front side of the Abbey. The building in these pictures is when the monks lived, the actual church is basically gone.

What a cute happy boy!!!!

Lizzie is getting so very good at walking. She now will walk all over the house usually without holding hands. I had to add a video of her walking. Here she is walking across the bridge at Bodiam Castle (I'm not sure if I am spelling that). This is a few weeks ago and in an unusual place but she is still cute!!!!!



Monday we went into Hastings itself to see some May Day dancing, however I left the camera in the car. The first thing that we saw in the town was tons and tons of motorbikes. It was quite a nice seafront, which we walked along. We then went up to the castle to see the dancing but went into a Smugglers Adventure, which was really interesting. I really enjoyed learning about the Smugglers and seeing a cave which they used to hide things in. By the time we got out of the caves and went to go into the castle the line was so long we decided not to go in the castle and watch the dancing. It was fun to see all the people dressed up as green men or just in green and it was a fun day even though it was crazy with all of the crowds.

That was our fun weekend!!!!

Kids Eating!!!

I found some interesting pictures of the kids eating as well that I thought I would share!!!!

Lizzie quite enjoys using large eating utensil when eating. She often asks for our forks and spoons. Here she is trying to eat off of the salad fork. She has also tried eating off of our plastic serving spoons. It is fun to watch her try to get these large spoons into her mouth.

Jamie has started eating solids as well (more pictures of this later), though sometimes he seems to just want to chew on the spoon!!!

I have been looking for a way to get Lizzie to eat raw carrots. One day she was begging me for a whole carrot so I gave it to her and she really quite enjoyed it.

Another day I was cutting up some pineapple and Jamie was getting a little grumpy so I gave him part of the core to chew on. He chewed away very well and when it was finally time to take it away it was noticeably smaller then it started out being.

Lizzie would not eat the pineapple pieces that I was giving her but she also really enjoyed the core part. This has now become one of their favorite treats. It is great that pineapple will keep them so happy so that I can get other things done in the kitchen, sadly we are now out of pineapples for the time being.

Kids Playing!!!

Well as it has been a while since I have posted anything on here I figured that I should put something up as I have a few spare moments. Not much to exciting has been going on though so I figured that I would just put up some pictures of the kids playing together.

At the bottom there is a movie of what these two are doing while laying on the blanket together!!

Lizzie seems to quite love her brother and will often give him kisses still!!!!

A while back Lizzie decided that she wanted to hold Jamie. I'm happy that I got some cute pictures of this when it happened, because now she cries when we put him on her lap even if she seems to be asking to hold him.

Aren't they so very cute. Lizzie does still try to pick him up sometimes, she just doesn't ike to hold him anymore.

And finally here they are just sitting on the couch together!!!

Here is a video of what these kids really get up to when left to themselves. I usually try not to let Lizzie do some of the things that she does in this video, but for the record sticking her finger in his mouth is one of her favorite things to do no matter how much I try to discourage it. It makes him laugh so I guess it doesn't pother him to badly!!!

Snow in April

Even though we saw a little bit of snow over Easter, it didn't stick and finally we got ourselves some real snow, kind of.

This is what our backyard looked like when we woke up on Sunday morning!!!!! Covered in Beautiful White Peaceful SNOW!!!!!

I was so excited that I had to make a snow man. Due to the slushiness and compactness of the snow that little guy pictured with all of us below took up all the snow from the lawn. It also helped that as soon as it stopped snowing it started melting.

Our girl even played with the snow a little and she might have even like it!!!!!

Brian and I had a bit of a snowball fight with the snow left on our vines.

This inspired our girl to throw some snow as well. I thought it was so cute that I made a movie of it!!!



Well that is our story of the snow we got this winter/spring. I'm sure that many of your stories would take up pages, but not all of you!!!!!

Our Girl is 18 months Old!!!!

Our little girl is finally figuring out how to use her legs all on her own!!!!

This video was taken just earlier this month!! It is so amazing to watch her learn and grow!!

She is contuning since then to get a little better and will even sometimes walk away from us towards toys or other things. Slowly but surely she is getting her legs under her!!!!

Easter Party

I love Easter so I figured that I might as well do something that I know for my first ever children's party!!!!!

We started by painting Easter Eggs, the kids were young but they still did pretty good job painting them, with a little assistance!!!

Here is Lizzie working on her egg, unless if this is her trying to hoard all of the paint brushes!!

Now it is time to find all of those eggs that got hidden in the garden. I just found one of them on Friday in our super overgrown lawn!!!

Yes even Lizzie found a few hidden out there. She is so much fun when it comes to these Easter Egg hunts. We may start hiding empty eggs just to give her something to find!!!!

Well there are just a few pictures of my very first kids party. I had fun and I hope others did as well!!!!

Easter in Wales

Easter Weekend, which is a four day weekend here, we decided to spend in the southern and middle part of Wales which we had not been to before. Here are some pictures for our last minute trip, which had only been booked the weekend before.

On Friday we left at 5:30 in the morning in hopes of missing the terrible traffic which was predicted. Which we did for the most part, we were however stopped for an hour or so behind an accident which closed the whole road, as most of them seem to do here. We were able to see the police cleaning the road and the ambulance remove someone from one of the cars. We did get a little worried because traffic was backed up in front of the accident as well but that accident was cleared before ours was. We then stopped at Stratford -upon-Avon for some breakfast with hot chocolate due to the arctic wind that had decided to visit all of the UK for the Easter weekend.
While there we did face the cold long enough to see Shakespeare's house, though we didn't go in.

We also stopped at a Water Garden because it looked interesting as we saw it from a sign on the side of the road. It mostly just seemed like someone's back yard, that had a river running through it, that they decided to charge people to go see. There were some very nice parts of it but mostly it was nice to stretch our legs and it was fun to watch Lizzie want to walk only over the bridges. She would wiggle to get down before going over the bridge and then she would beg to be held again as soon as we got over the bridge.

Around 3:00 we pulled up to our B&B just outside of Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales. It was a very remote little place about a mile out of the town which happens to be the smallest town in Great Britain. Below is a picture of the place which we took off of their website.

We really enjoyed our stay here and we were able to get to know the owners quite well as we would go down to the sitting room at night after the children were asleep and talk to them. Saturday morning started with a visit from the Easter Bunny!!!
Here is Lizzie finding some eggs!!!

She is getting quite good at her balance and was even able to bend over to pick some up!!!

Then we stopped to see a Devil's Bridge Waterfall on our way to the coast. Above this waterfall are three bridges with the top one being the one the road currently goes over, which we don't quite understand how they used the other bridges in their time, but something must have changed since then. There is also a legend about how the devil built the first bridge.

The Falls were beautiful but to get there we had to climb down what they called Jacob's Ladder. They were some very deep steps, I just had to take a picture of it.

Yes, they really were that steep it is not an optical illusion!!!

This picture is of the first falls that we came to. Simple yet so beautiful!!!

And here are all of us right up next to the falls!!

A little further up the trail and we came to yet another waterfall. I was playing with my camera and got this picture in black and white, but I think it looks quite nice this way.
We were also playing around with Brian's camera and with the shutter speed, but sadly all I had to put on were my pictures and we have yet to see how Brian's really turned out!!

The walking warmed us up again, but as we got closer to the top it again turned cold and there was even some snow flying around.

After visiting the falls we drove along the coast as best as the road would let us. During the drive back we stopped at Cilgerran Castle.

Easter we woke up to snow again, but thankfully by the time we were ready to go the snow had melted and the weather had turned so that it didn't seem too scary to drive around the small hilly, winding roads of Wales. So we headed through the Brecon Beacons to Merthyr Tydfil. We got there just in time to attend Sacrament Meeting. Then heading back into the Beacons to visit DanYr Ogof Caves. There were three caves all close to each other with many dinosaur statues and an ancient village model.

Here is a picture from the first cave which had this amazing wall of minerals left behind!!!!

The second cave was called Cathedral Cave. It is a huge cave, hence the name. At the end of the cave which goes back maybe three hundred yards there is a big open part with a waterfall running into it as can be seen behind me. You can walk under the water fall and above the lake to another part of land where you could get married if you so fancied. It was also nice in this cave as they had nice wedding type music playing!!!

I'm not sure that Brian should have his back to those creatures behind him. Notice the one behind him climbing down the hill.

The last of the caves called Bone cave, in order to go in you had to wear a hard hat and walk up this walk way that you can see behind me. Then walked into a open room that talked about how people and animals use caves. Lizzie refused to wear the hard hat so Brian and her didn't do it. With her being carried on his back they had a hard time ducking low enough to get in the entrance to the cave. Jamie sure looks cute in his hat though!!!!!

On our way home we drove over the Beacons and at the very top of it this view met our eyes. So we pulled over to take pictures and I got out in the freezing wind to take pictures. I would take a few then hop back in the car to warm up. Brian just took his pictures from the car which was probably smarter. We found it very interesting that these Beacons were covered in brown growth, where just down in the valley it was green and beautiful.

Our visit came at lambing season so as we drove around we were able to see these lambs in many of the fields of sheep which were everywhere. I just had to include a picture of them which I took on Monday morning as we started our trip back.

We decided to stop at this castle, Tretower Court and Castle as Lizzie was having a hard time being in the car so much. It was quite interesting as we also were able to see the court area where they would hold dinners or whatever. They even had the type to food and spices that they would have used set out for us to see.

Here are Brian and Lizzie up in the tower battling the wind just so I can take a picture of them. Sadly you can't see their hair well enough to see how windy it really was up there!!!!

Our last stop on the way home Tintern Abbey. We were amazed at how much of it still exists even though it has been in ruins for many years. Sadly we didn't choose to go in as Lizzie was asleep as we pulled up to it and Brian was quite worried about the traffic we might face getting back to London. They did let me get a few pictures from the road though.

What you can't see for the picture is that there is quite a bit of stuff behind this building and it goes back quite far. I guess this is something we may have to take more time to see next time we find ourselves in Wales. It was a wonderful trip even with the hours of driving and it does make us want to return soon!!!!!!!