I guess Thursday is officially spring. We are headed out of town for two weeks this weekend. Since Easter comes earlier this year, so does spring break. We are headed to the Netherlands first for a few days to see the tulips and Amsterdam then we are going to Garmisch for over a week and enjoy all that Bavaria has to offer. If we can survive all of the driving, we should have a nice trip. We are staying at an American armed forces facility in Germany and they will have Easter activities for the kids. Cory is excited to ski in the Alps even if it is just with the kids. We are not going to Switzerland this trip after all. It is really expensive there. If you are going to drive there you have to buy a year long car registration, hotels are over 300 bucks a night, I don't know a lot about that area and don't know anyone who has been there so it will take more research to figure out a plan and they are not part of the EU and have their own currency. I can see why my friend left after living there several years and never able to even afford a car. So we are hoping to take a road trip to Italy next summer and hit Switzerland along the way or take a winter trip just to Switzerland sometime. We will figure it out later. This trip will take us into Austria a bit and lots in southern Germany. We will be driving through Belgium as well. I am excited to see all the tulips in Holland. I hope there are tons in bloom.
Last Sunday was Mothering Sunday (British Mother's Day). They gave us flowers at church and the primary kids sang and did a good job. Our primary is growing. We barely fit in the primary room. We may have to split them into junior and senior primary. I'm enjoying my calling as first counselor. We had a scare a couple of weeks ago when one of our elderly teachers collapsed during class and the ambulance had to come take her to the hospital. Millie is a wonderful lady and loves the kids so much. If she is not in the hospital she will be there to teach her class. She was Avery's teacher last year and she still talks to him every Sunday. She seems better now and I hope it lasts. She has some sort of heart condition I think and I don't know if they can't operate and fix it or they won't. The longer I am here the scarier the NHS is. It really is a matter of there being only x amount of resources and so your care is dependent upon them judging if someone else needs that resource more. I know people who have been suffering for years waiting for what seems a simple procedure to us in the states. My friend's husband was rushed to the hospital last week with appendicitis but instead of emergency surgery, they made him wait for three days before they got around to him. They had him prepped and ready to go into surgery when a previous patient came back with complications so they took his time slot and they were going to send him home and call later to let him know when they could get him back in. Luckily they kept him and did the surgery the next day in the end because the family was not ok with that option.
Tristan is better. His fever lasted only three days. He was very sad to only miss one day of school while Avery missed a whole week. It must have been a virus and Avery probably didn't need the antibiotic they gave him. I'm gonna have to be on top of these doctors or start paying to take them to the private ones.
On Wednesday I went with a few lady friends to the Cheltenham Festival. It was ladies day so I dressed up. There were lots of ladies dressed nice and wearing cool hats. I enjoyed the experience but I don't think I would go back. I imagine Royal Ascot is better but even more expensive. I kind of don't get the whole thing. You pay 40 pounds for tickets to just get in but those are not even the good tickets. It's the middle ground. You have to buy the over 100 pound tickets to get into the club where there are seats and restaurants and such. We had access to standing room only areas and we could walk around and look at the shops full of beautiful expensive riding type blazers and suits etc, food vendors, the horses and such. I don't gamble so the races were not as exciting for me as some. I did like the jump racing though. Every time they go over one you are afraid they will fall. I think I would enjoy the experience more if there were a ladies section with no men drinking and smoking. That was what was mostly there so it made it harder to enjoy watching all the nicely dressed ladies because they were hidden amongst all the rowdy men. It was also just too crowded in general, definitely would not have met fire marshal requirements back home. I had good company though and the traffic getting there and back wasn't too horrible since we took some back roads part of the way. The Festival is a big event here every year. I rented a hat from the shop up the road. I would like to take a class and learn to make my own. I prefer more modern and funky but the shop just had traditional.
Thursday a week ago was World Book Day and the kids went to school dressed as a character from a book. The kids really enjoyed it and most kids participated. Avery was a cowboy, spurs and all. I didn't let him take a toy gun because that would be a big no no is the states but I don't think they would have cared here. I saw other kids with toy weapons. Tristan was quidditch Harry Potter. There were a lot of teachers and kids dressed up as Where's Wally (Where's Waldo in America). It's easy if you have a red striped shirt I guess. There were also a lot of kids as various Harry Potter characters. Lidia and Aiden's school dressed up on Friday instead of Thursday. Aiden didn't dress up but Lidia wore the Willy Wonka costume and won for her year. She got a ten pound gift card to the book store. There were kids dressed as the other characters from that book as well. These British authors are very popular here in their home country. A local author visited Avery and Tristan's school and Avery was in a picture in the paper with him.
Yesterday was Saint Patrick's Day. We all wore green to church and wore our shamrock lapel pins. We seemed alone in our efforts to have fun with the holiday. The English don't celebrate it. They say they tolerate the Irish. There is quite a bit a racism towards other parts of the UK here, especially Scotland and Ireland. One lady at church said to Cory,"But you're not even Irish" to which he replied that he does have some Irish ancestry but you don't have to be Irish to celebrate St Patrick's day. Apparently the English have St George's Day and the Scots have St Andrew's Day but they are not as popular. In the US St Patrick's Day has become very commercialized and it seems a day to celebrate green, rainbows, luck, gold, and try to catch those naughty leprechauns. People here think that Americans shouldn't celebrate it but they are not realizing that America has seven times more Irish descendants than Ireland itself. So many Irish left during the famine and immigrated to the states. Here there was no mention of it anywhere and no St Patrick's merchandise in the stores. I have seen a movie about St Patrick and it was pretty good and it's about Christianity but that doesn't seem to be what the holiday is about anymore.
We had our six missionaries over for dinner last night and fed them chicken enchiladas with rice, beans, corn and real lemonade. No corned beef and cabbage here, yuck. We did have rainbow cupcakes, rainbow sherbet and sprite for dessert though. hee hee We have a good ward and good missionaries. Seems like they are always baptizing people. Our ward is growing. I like to have them over. We have three elders from Utah-Bountiful, Fruit Heights, Alpine, and one from Alberta Canada. Our sisters are from England and Spain. A young man in our ward was just called to the Scotland Ireland mission and another is currently serving in the Leeds mission just north of here where some of his extended family lives. Most locals don't serve outside of the UK. Two brothers in our ward served in the same mission in Scotland like ten years ago and were even in the same area together for a while. If Lidia and Aiden both serve missions they could go at the same time now that the age requirement has changed.
