Easter

It was a great day. The weather was beautiful and it was great to see everyone at church. After church, we relaxed and cooked. Then the Potters came over for Easter dinner! Let's see, we ate and then played on the "jumpoline."

This is how Esther played "crack the egg." I think she done cracked.Dinner was honey-glazed salmon, roasted vegetables, crusty bread, and scalloped potatoes. For "pudding" we had panna cotta with honey, saffron, and figs. We wanted to do a kind of new-testament dinner with loaves and fishes then milk and honey for dessert. A success! I've never made panna cotta before, and I'll do a few things differently next time, but it was yummy.

We loved playing with the kiddoes and talking to Craig and Naomi.

I'm thankful for what allows us to be carefree and happy, and that is the fact that we have a loving Heavenly Father who provided a way for all of us poor dessert-loving, trampoline-bouncing children to come back and tell him all about what a time we had. I'm grateful for our Savior and his perfect example. As I was sitting in church today, I was reminded of how I felt sitting in church as a little girl on Easter: in my pretty Sunday dress, excited to be at church, happy as a clam. Our lives are hard, and so are pews, but that doesn't mean our butts aren't right where they need to be. Yeah, you can quote that.

Guns and Cars: I am a dude...and apparently, so is Sarah.

Bro Post #2 (Heh.)

It has once again become the time for the male portion of this little female-driven utopia in England to make itself heard.

There are many things that I like about England. That being said, I miss America. I like baseball games, real Mountain Dew, stores that are open past six pm, gyms with weights listed in pounds, having a freezer (I know that has nothing to do with location), and I miss guns and cars. I can't do much about most of the things on that list, but earlier this week I found something that I could do, an answer, if you will, filling the hole left by the last two.

And that answer was Fast 5.

Now I know what you're thinking, the first one was good, the second one didn't have Vin Diesel, no one saw the third one, and the fourth one killed off a main character in a crappy way in the first ten minutes of the movie--what have they got left?

More than I was expecting.

Much of this is thanks to the addition of Dwayne Johnson. Vin Diesel is a big man that makes me feel small, and I like to watch him punch people. I loved the idea of having the Rock, a bigger guy that makes Vin Diesel feel small who is better at punching people--and the mixture was like Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, just a little faster.

The second thing I liked: the rest of the cast. Paul Walker was in it, but I don't remember anything he does. Ludacris was in it and he plays, as many rappers do, a convincing geek. There were two hispanic guys who were hilarious.

The third thing: the mother of all toilet bombs. Awesome.

The fourth thing: guns. Many British and American citizens can't understand why I love guns. My educated, thought out response to that inquiry is: I just do. Leave me alone. Guns show character in movies, and they give insight.

Dirty Harry has a Super Blackhawk.

Han Solo has a low-slung holster for his blaster.

The Joker used a ridiculously long revolver.

The T-800 uses a mini-gun, and a grenade launcher, and shotgun, and a .45.

The characters in movies are sometimes mismatched to their guns, and when this happens the movie makes me sad. This movie does an excellent job of pairing weapon to character. Walker gets a little cop gun, Diesel uses a combat shotgun, and the Rock has a pistol, on a low-slung holster, that wouldn't fit in the hand of a smaller man. I like guns.

The most important thing in this movie: the cars.

Living in England is beautiful. But I miss having a car. I like to go to Albertson's at 12:30 to get ice cream and something from the redbox that I will not watch until it is three days past due. I like doing that. I like driving with no particular place to go whilst listening to Chuck Berry's "No Particular Place to Go," because I like the irony. I just love my car (this is not in reference to a specific, or as Tara would say "pacific" car, I just miss all of them). Fast 5 is not going to be an Oscar (little trademark sign) contender, it's not going to be somebody, it's going to be a bum.

And that's ok, because it has guns and pretty cars. The first Fast movie had one real car in it, and the producers must have listened to their audience for once because Fast 5 has mostly real cars. The '70 Charger, GT40, '71 (eat it Dada) Hemi 'Cuda, and the most beautiful Corvette I have ever seen.

Yes, there are boy racers, but these are easily counter-acted by the Rock's Batmobile.

This is why I liked this "not as bad as I was expecting...actually it was really good" movie.

I am an American Bro.

This is what I am.

Whitstable is full of crime and murder... and a little bit of art!

A long time ago, when we were looking for a place to live near Canterbury, a wonderful drunken man said that "Whitstable is full of crime and murder..." (then he threw his alcoholic beverage to the floor, smashing it. Then he walked away from us. But, when he passed an art gallery he turned back to us and yelled "... and a little bit of art." Now I don't know if Whistable is full of those things, but I do know that it is full of tourists, and sun, and beaches, and good food. We had a bit of an adventure with the Potters yesterday, and I decided to blog about it.



We did quite a bit in one afternoon. We visited the beach, and the beach promenade (top left photo) and I fell in love with the beach huts (top right) too bad I don't have 17,000 pounds handy for that purchase. We also saw the Tea Gardens (bottom left photo) and the Whitstable Castle and grounds. (bottom right photo) I have to say, Whitstable is gorgeous.



Upon entering the promenade we were met with this warning sign. (Top left photo.) Good to know they were worried about our safety. But then there were signs every 50 feet or so... seemed a bit overkill. Then we had to scout out for the best location. (Top right) Jackpot! We found a clear section that we almost had to ourselves. (Bottom left) And the moment our stuff was down we lost Annie to the sea. (Bottom right) I wonder if she is part fish.



Later on we were on the other side of the harbor soaking in the sun. I caught a picture of my fellow pilgrims looking like they are straight out of a sunglasses ad. (picture on the left.) And we were all in love with being so close to the sea. It was beautiful, and not too cold!



To the left of the harbor was the not so pretty side of the beach, it was full of remains of fish, crabs, and oysters. Jesse turned into the claw (left picture) while Esther tried to relocate the recycled oyster shell pile, (middle picture) while Kathleen played the spine and rib bones of a fish like an accordion. (right picture) Still the view was great and the weather was perfect. Such a nice day.



One of our final stops was "Squeeze Gut Alley." (left picture) Apparently it was used by smugglers back in the day. And Naomi told a story that two smugglers were able to escape getting detailed by a police officer because they ran down Squeeze Gut Alley and got away because the officer (who was quite large) couldn't fit through. Now I don't know how true that story is... but I like it. The start of the alley is fine, and I think anyone would be quite comfortable. (second picture) But by the end it gets really squishy. I caught Jesse, Kathleen, and Annie as they were coming to the end. (third picture.) I also caught a larger man trying to squeeze his gut to get through. (last picture) It really was just perfect timing. His wife, who may or may not have had too much to drink, told me I should get documentation of this attempt. So I did. Does that make me a bad person?



We had a wonderful day, and are so grateful for the Potters showing us around their lovely town. It was an incredible day. And thank you to Esther (pictured on the left) and Heather (pictured on the right) for being awesome troopers during our long adventure. Next time we'll bring our swimsuits!

It's a girl! And another girl! And a boy!

Tilly's puppies were born a few days ago, and they're getting pretty darn cute.

This is Jesse's favorite. She's the smaller of the two girls and just wanted to nestle into his shirt.

This is the little boy. He was born with a Sarah foot (aka a clubfoot) and it has to be taped in place every few days so it grows straight. They're kindred spirits.

And this one's my favorite. She the fattest, blackest puppy. Doesn't she just look like a little panther or something? I'd name her Bagira. Or Blackie. Or Lottie.

Tilly's such a good mama.

Annie doesn't have a favorite because, you know, she doesn't like dogs.

Springtime on the Farm

The last two weeks have felt like something from an E.B. White book. The weather's been fantastic, and everything is having babies. I've yet to get good pictures of the lambs down the road or Tilly's puppies (3 days old!), but here are a few snips of what it looks like around here lately.

Jesse stole the little girl puppy for about three minutes. We're excited for Saturday when we're puppy sitting all day and we can spend more time with them.

Jesse and Sarah were craving chocolate chip cookies the other night, and I kinda might have told him we had everything for them. Jesse started making the cookies, only to discover we didn't have butter. So he used shortening. Then we realized we didn't have brown sugar, so in went granulated sugar and treacle. THEN we didn't have vanilla. A teaspoon of Marsala--that's about the same, right? No chocolate chips, so he found half a chocolate bar and threw it in. This, by the way, is the man who measures with precision when cooking. He wasn't happy. However, the cookies turned out to be lovely!

We've been out in the yard a lot the past few nights playing catch. It's been absolutely perfect weather for it. That and our hamburgers and watermelon tonight almost gave us enough of an America fix.

It's rhubarb time!!! England is much more pro-rhubarb than the states. It's a flavor of everything here--candy, yogurt--you name it. I'm cool with that.

I think these sheep are happy to be home. And I'm glad they aren't the mutton stew we thought they might have been.

Baby cow friend.

We said goodbye to our dear Sister Richie a few weeks ago. This was our last dinner together. This isn't us actually having dinner...this is before...

More puppy pictures to come!

Paris

Ooookay. So we don't just sit around and eat sushi. We do other stuff too! Jesse's sister Tara came to visit, and we had a supercool time. We took her around Canterbury, then on a little trip to Paris. Paris is an interesting, beautiful, dirty, cool place.

On arriving, we were completely lost and very obviously tourists with our backpacks and dazed expressions. We wandered through a sort of dodgy part of town in what we hoped was the direction of the Seine. Thank goodness, Tara spotted some missionaries (one of whom was from Spokane!) who were nice enough to show us around the Metro and point us in the right direction. In the next half hour we saw 10 missionaries (about a third of the missionaries in Paris), and then we didn't see another one the rest of the trip.

We saw all the important stuff--the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, L'Arc De Triomphe, etc. We climbed the stairs up the Eiffel tower at night, which was pretty cool, and Tara only whined a little. She actually was very pleasant and good company the whole trip. We found some great chocolate creations and a food market. I think my favorite part of the trip was the night we took the train out of Paris to this little bistro on an island in the river. There was an accordion band playing and lots of dancing. It was really casual with dads dancing with their daughters and dogs under the outside tables. We sat outside under the lights and wisteria and ate chocolate mousse. It was lovely, and I wish wish wish we had an equivalent to that type of place in the states. If all my dreams came true, I'd open a pie house and serve pie and hire bands to play and have the whole neighborhood in for dancing. Sigh. Maybe I'll transform Rexburg someday...

All in all, it was a good trip. We shopped (we did, after all, have a 16-year-old in tow), we ate, we danced, we looked at priceless works of art, we got lost, we walked until our feet died. We visited the Ina-recommended Poilane Bakery and Dehillerin cooking supply store. Disappointingly, the nice man in Dehillerin didn't know what I meant as I tried to ask if they had a pastry blender. And he spoke perfect English. And OH YEAH! We went to EuroDisney! I had reservations about spending one of our Paris days in Disneyland, but I'm so glad we went. There were some great rides, and the people had to be nice to us.