England Trip 2022

Seeing Thellie was wonderful- it was sweet to see Lucy offer her a chocolate or ask if she wanted to sit with us for dinner. It was an unexpected exciting thing to find the clothesline- I did several loads of wash at thellie's and Ella and I would stretch out the line in the back garden in the breeze and clohespin all the things on it- it was like therapeutic.

On the flight home, there were no sick bags in the seat pockets. Every once in a while I need one, so I saved a pretzel bag in case it was needed. And boy was it needed. Lucy felt like she was about to throw up right when we landed, so I quickly handed it to her. It was like 4 or 5 rounds of sick. and it started to drip out the bag, so I quickly started holding it in my hands over the aisle- I felt like a supermom. Meanwhile, Ella starts crying profusely because she is so grossed out by the situation, immediately followed by patronizing exasperation, "I can't believe Lucy would throw up! That is so disgusting of her. Get it away!" 

The lady behind me offers gum. We take it. I offer one to Lucy- Ella is annoyed that I am even offering the mint gum to her sister because she thinks its for her! The flight attendant gives us a bag. Ella is offended that I didn't ask for a tissue because she was crying. 

Lucy finishes, smiles, smells her breath in her hand, and says, "not too bad."

the girls, and all of us loved the double decker buses. we rode on them in Norwich quite a bit, and took a open air double decker around London to tour it. It was embarrassingly touristy, but SUCH a good choice. our girls didn't complain about walking and we could see everything. 

These were the ancient ruins called Thetford Priory, it was a monastery hundreds of years ago. The girls climbed all over it and it was a nice break on our long drive from Norwich to London. I love ruins they are so ... romantic? like in a dreamy super old, mysterious, fantastical sort of way?

We rented this electric boat on the Wensom river in Norwich. it wasn't as cool as we had hoped. we wanted to sail by the city, but we didn't rent it long enough to sail all the way over there. instead we passed by a sewage outlet that was very stinky. and a lot of nice trees as well- but still underwhelming. 

Now that I home, I feel a bit anxious that whenever I try to teach important life lessons- ella always in annoyed by it. i guess that is fairly normal- but at only 8 years old?! i guess i expected it more from a teenager.