Read-a-thon

Anna at her read-a-thon

Anna has had a really hard time reading. She hasn't been reading on to grade level. It has been a very challenging and frustrating activity for her, to the point she refuses to do it or puts up a huge fight.

Amazingly though, she is very impressive with her ability to comprehend what is going on in the stories, even though she isn't reading the words correctly.

She has been diagnosed with ADHD, no surprise, and we have started her on medicine. It is amazing! Everything clicks for her now and she is reading with barely any mistakes and actually enjoys it. She will be able to do the work that her smart brain is capable of.

Here she is, in her classroom, at school, set up for 3 hours of reading, and I know she will be able to do it.

So, so proud of her!

Halloween

BOO! 

(Maddie's favorite thing to say right now)

Carving the pumpkins

Anna

Maddie

Frankie Stein (Gracie), Purple Witch (Anna), Pink Witch (Maddie)

Bath, London

Trying to catch the blog up with our life. Not doing a good job, so I am trying to at least wrap up our England trip. The last city we went to was Bath, England. People love Bath. I thought it was nice, it was definitely cold, just the very tall rows of stone building were a bit overbearing for me personally, but that is just me. We visited the Roman Bath, which was pretty cool, Joe really liked seeing it and how it was built.

Look at the pretty green water, at least it has healing powers.

Joe at the Bath, don't fall in!

Tasting the Bath water....

Not very good, eh?

The city and of course a cathedral.

 During our time in Bath we went on an all day trip with Mad Max tours to Stonehenge, the Cotswolds, Lacock, and Avebury, it was really cool, probably one of the best days of the trip.

Stonehenge

More sheep

Avebury

At the Avebury Stones

At Lacock Abbey - they filmed Harry Potter

The town of Lacock

Cute bakery in Lacock

 In the Cotswolds we went to the village of Castle Combe. It was so pretty, next visit I would love to see more villages.

And Castle Combe presents this charming scene,

of hill, woods and meadows cloth'd in green.

Here grand terrestrial scenes, almost celestial nice,

makes Castle Combe, sweet vale, an earthy Paradise.

                                                                   Edward Dowling (19th Century)

Graveyard in Castle Combe at St. Andrews Church

A tomb of a Knight that was part of the crusades.

Love the chair over the sign

Look how short the doors are!

Looking down the street of the village

 Some more pretty houses.

That pretty much wraps up our England trip. It was so much fun, I loved it over there and hope we get to go back!

I haven't blogged about our life in a while. No, we are not boring! In fact, we have been so busy that I haven't had the time to do it. So, I am going to try to catch us up by the end of this month, so bear with me if I jump around a bit.

Back to England. (Would love to be back!)

Here we are in London. Great city, great time. We did all (as much as we could) the tourist things. I will say, we did put in some long days. I don't have a picture, but we did ride the hop on/off double decker bus tour, that was really fun.

 Here we are on the famous Yeoman Warder tour at the Tower of London. This Yeoman Warder is as they say, enduring and entertaining! Full of jokes, of course not to be taken personal, as some Frenchies did when they left after a remark about France, they probably just couldn't understand what he was saying, the Frenchies were always getting in trouble over there on the tours.

 We visited the Tower of London and it is amazing and huge, we actually didn't tour the chapel (next trip), but we did get to see the crown jewels, very impressive and pretty cool to see what the royals use in ceremonies that took place so long ago and also today.

 We went through Shakespeare's Globe. One of our friends son's who at the age of 13 is an avid Shakespeare reader and greatly appreciates Shakespeare's humor. So, we brought him home a t-shirt.

 Here is the view from St. Paul's Cathedral, the stone gallery. The Cathedral was amazing. We went to the whispering gallery which was fun, then up to stone gallery. Joe went all the way up to the golden gallery, but I have to admit once I got on the narrow stairway and thought about how high I was, I chickened out. I had a lovely time staying one gallery down. Randomly though, we did meet another couple from NC on the stairwell, small world right?

View going up to the Golden Gallery, taken by Joe

 We stopped by the Queen's grocer Fortnum & Mason to pick up some tea. Fortnum & Mason has been the supplier for the royal family for 150 years, although may no longer be...meat scandal... just brewed....

Hey, look at my handsome traveling companion!

This still cracks me up. 

What else happened in London? We ran through Kensington Gardens, beautiful. We went to the National Portrait Gallery. We ate fish N chips, although the best fish N Chips we had were in Bath. Joe decided that all the hotels we stayed at were girly, what can I say? We were close to a tube stop, so that was nice and convenient.  The breakfast at the hotel we stayed at was so good! We ate dinner at this one place, I can't remember the name, that was also really good, we were regulars there (for two nights). We walked over to Big Ben and also saw Westminster Abbey. We have to go back because there was a lot we didn't get to see, there is so much there. We did hit every Disney Store on the trip looking for Frozen stuff, no luck. And we did go through Harrod's, that place is crazy, you could easily get lost in there, but they have everything, everything! 

We also went to a great bookshop, Hatchard. I didn't realize it at the time, but it is one of the oldest bookshops in London and has three Royal Warrants. We just stumbled upon it and I just walked in and said, "this is what a bookstore should be". It was just as you would imagine a bookshop to be, charming, warm, worn, old, cozy, well-loved, and full of great books, inviting you to pick up a book and read. I could have spent hours and hours in there, magical.

Hatchard



It was fun visiting London.

York, England

Next stop, York, England. York was a really cool city that we spent one night in. The city is surrounded by a 3 1/2 mile wall that was built by the Romans. The city was also at one point inhabited by Vikings. It became prosperous through the wool trade and became the capital of the North for the Church of England. It also eventually became a railway hub and a confectionary center.

While it has all this great history, it also is big into yorkshire pudding and pork pies, yum!

While we were visiting we ran the wall which was really cool. We visited the Jorvik Viking Centre. We went to the National Railway Museum. The National Railway Museum was really neat and had a lot of different trains. One of the museum guides walked around with us for a few minutes explaining some of the older trains, such as the mail carrier which was pretty cool. They used to catch the mail in a net on the side of the train! We went to the York Minster, which is the largest medieval cathedral in Northern Europe. It was huge! And pretty cool. We also visited The Shambles. The Shambles is a very old street that has timber framed building that overhang. They are so close together that I feel like you could stand in the middle of the street and touch each side. We got some yummy pork pies and fudge. We walked around a lot and of course visited an old traditional English pub. Apparently, in England they use a great draft/tap system, that we don't use over here, which is great (or so Joe says, he was really excited about it.)

Stage 2 of the Tour de France (starting soon) is beginning in York.

This is how my bag looked most of the time, I just could not keep it on its wheels. Maybe it was excited and jumpy to be here too.

Picture of the Roman Wall that surrounds the city.

Picture of the city from the walk in from the train station.

The Shambles! Watch out I think it is tipping over. The street is probably not for the claustrophobic.

The York Minster.

The Entrance to the city in the Roman wall.

It's the inside of Hogwarts Express! (Not really Hogwarts Express, but looks just like it)

Queen Victoria's aunt's car on the Royal Train.

Picture of the inside of Queen Victoria's car.

Queen Victoria's Royal Train, very royal looking.

Look how big these wheels are!

Mandy trying to get into platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station in London. Unfortunately, I am a muggle.

Also a Muggle.

Edinburgh, Scotland

Joe and I went to Scotland and England this spring. I was an amazing trip. I have always wanted to go, but never been. We went for just over a week. It was a little bumpy getting there, our flight was re-routed 3 times, apparently it is not easy to re-route international flights, but likely our arrival time was only delayed by 45 minutes. So, basically thank you American Express, if we didn't spend a boatload of money with you for the business we wouldn't have been able to have the amazing women at the Delta Club get us there on time. Maybe that is their thanks to us.

It actually was pretty funny. This women, Mavre, worked for about an hour to find a flight out of Atlanta for us, apparently getting to Edinburgh from other major hubs was the problem, not too many flights into there and all full. All of a sudden she calls "downstairs", and we hear "I have this couple that needs to be on your flight, do you have room"......"apparently they need to be in Edinburgh for a wedding tomorrow afternoon (yeah, right, and we did not tell her this lie)"........."Yeah, they can run". We did run, actually I think pretty much every flight that day we took we ran, we made it though flying through Dublin to Edinburgh. The luck of the irish! Lots of Irish people on our flight, I love their accent.

Joe outside Edinburgh Castle. 

View of Edinburgh from the castle.

Mandy wearing everything and very cold at the castle.

Joe and Mandy outside Balmoral Hotel. We had tea there. This is where JK Rowling (when she finally had some money, because it is a NICE hotel) finished writing her Harry Potter novels.

MacLellan Castle. These are bedrooms.

Joe in the Great Hall of MacLellan Castle

Mandy outside MacLellan castle.

Outside Elephant House. This is where JK Rowling wrote the beginning of the Harry Potter series. We wanted to eat there, but they were closed :( Next door was good though!

Edinburgh was amazing though. I loved the city, pretty, walkable, lots of shops and cute pedestrian only streets with shops. I also loved all the stone buildings.

We went to Edinburg Castle  which was pretty cool. It was up on a hill, so even colder! 

We also went on a tour of Mary King's Close. In Edinburgh they call the alleys closes. Edinburgh is built on the side of a hill that is on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, so they are slope steeply downhill with a tall building on either side, they are really cool, really fun to walk through. Closes were named after someone prominent on the close, we toured Mary King's. Which is now the foundation for government buildings because it was cheaper to build on the old buildings instead of building new foundations. Anyway, great tour, highly recommend.

We spent one day driving down to Kirkcudbright. Kircudbright pronounced Kir-coo-bree is a small fishing town in Dumfries and Galloway, which is the southwest coast. The reason we went here is because this is where my dad's (McClelland) family originated from. And we have a castle there too! McLellan's Castle. Sorry to disappoint, but as you can see there is no roof, floors, heat, or any of the other comforts we have grown accustomed to. But, other than the missing roof and floors, it is pretty much intact, so it was cool to be able to really see the layout and rooms. Plus, I got to sign the MacLellan guest book, that all the visiting MacLellan descendants get to sign, I was excited about that (I am probably the only one, but that is OK). So if you meet anyone who has a variation of the last name MacLellan I am related to them. There is actually this girl who was a year below me in school who married a McClelland, spelled the same way that our name is too! I do a double take every time I see it on Facebook. I always think "who is that? oh yeah Audrey" freaks me out a bit, like I forgot a family member.

Joe drove from Edinburgh to Kirkcudbright. He did a great job. We saw a lot of sheep and green pastures, so, so pretty. The highways were really easy to navigate and were pretty, not all junkie and confusing like over here.

We went to the Balmoral Hotel  hotel for tea. It was named as the best place for tea in Edinburgh, and I love tea. Plus, this is where JK Rowling would stay when finishing up her Harry Potter series books and I love Harry Potter, so naturally it was a good fit. Tea was very nice, and so yummy. Plus we had champagne, who knew you could get champagne at tea? Fancy champagne, that 007 drinks, (he also prefers Maclellan's whiskey) which is nice that we also got a 007 drink because we did not make it to Dukes Hotel (an Ian Fleming hangout) for a Vesper Martini (which also, I probably wouldn't drink, chocolate or some fruit one, or cucumbery or something, yes) Oh, well next time (there will be a next time).

Anyway, the food was great. Lots of fresh fish and lots of smoked salmon, we love both. Great cafes and I love how it is daylight longer over there. 

It was hard to stay up the first day we were there, but we managed to stay up to 9 pm. Yes, we were falling asleep at dinner and I have never been so dog tired in my life, but we did it. The hotel we stayed at was great too, nice room, good food, easy to walk everywhere.

Visiting Scotland was great even though it was a short visit. We need to go back for some more exploring. I would like to visit the Scottish Highlands, take the train over Glenfinnan Viaduct (Hogwort's Express), see Sterling Castle that they just redid that is supposed to be amazing, look for Nessie..........