Farmers Market

This morning the girls and I ventured out at the crack of 11:00 am to battle the Wimbledon crowds on the tube and go to the Wimbledon Farmers Market. This is the first time I've made it to a farmers market since I was in graduate school, and it was lovely. We came home with:

Spinach
Oakhill lettuce
cherry tomatoes
cucumbers
eggplants
peas
fresh bread
fresh made sausages
apple-strawberry juice
apples

All for about £17. Not too bad, all in all, and the girls had a lovely time on the playground while I shopped. I think we'll be heading back again, although hopefully on a less crowded train next week!

Cornwall, RAB and The Apple in the Garden

Cornwall

Last Friday I picked the girls up from school at lunchtime and we headed out onto the road. We drove, and drove, and drove some more. We sat in traffic for an hour in Bristol. And then we drove some more. Down the M4, the M5 and the A30, all the way to Penzance, home of the pirates. We finally washed up on the shores of Boswarthen Farm and plunked our selves down for a few days of camping out (of sorts) and hanging about waiting for Himself to arrive at Lands End.

Cornwall is absolutely gorgeous - hilly open country, sheer rocky cliffs down to beautiful sandy beaches and turquoise blue water shading to navy away from shore. The weather was beyond perfect. On Saturday we headed east to Glendurgan Gardens and spent a lovely afternoon walking through the grounds, working our way through the maze and climbing on the rocks on the beach.

Back at our camp, the girls happily tended to some chickens and we had sausages and fresh scrambled eggs for dinner. At 9:30 pm. Because cooking over a poorly designed wood stove burning sumac is not a fast process. The next day we hit Trengwainton Gardens, Sennen Cove for some more beachy times, and went off to Lands End to meet Daddy at the end of his ride.

RAB
Himself arrived in Lands End at about 3:30 on Sunday afternoon, after nine days and 1008 miles of riding, including 15 vertical miles of climbing. He had an absolute blast, but was so completely done in that he was pretty much useless for a good 36 hours post-finish. We hung out at Lands End having a few beers with his riding buddies for a couple of hours, and then headed back to the farm. Our plans for coming back to London on Monday got waylaid in the sunshine of Monday morning, so we hung out at yet another spectacular beach - Kynance Cove - splashing in the extremely cold water and eating Cornish ice cream.

We finally headed home yesterday, breaking the 6 hour long journey into more manageable bits with a stop at Castle Drogo in Devon and tea in Somerset with some friends.

And last night I may have done something very, very silly...

I entered next year's Ride Across Britain. Uh oh!

The Apple in the Garden

Our visit to Trengwainton was enhanced by the sudden removal of one of Devil's wobbly front teeth while she was eating an apple. We were sitting on a bench having a snack, when I suddenly realized she was looking at her hand and saying "What's this?"

Lo and behold, there was a very small tooth lying in her palm, a bloody spot on her apple and a lovely line of bloody drool trailing down her chin. It was all very exciting. Nana's beautiful Tooth Fairy pillow was put to work that night, and the lucky thing ended up with some butterfly hair clips and a two pound coin for giving up her first tooth! She has been informed, however, that the Tooth Fairy was being extra generous because it was the first tooth she'd lost. Such riches will not be quite so forthcoming in the future!

We arrived back in London at 9:30 last night, exhausted, salty, sunburned and sporting some poison ivy (lucky me!). The girls went back to school this morning a bit worn out, and I suspect our evening holds both much wailing and drama, and very early bedtimes. But it was an absolutely fantastic trip. I hope the rest of the family is looking forward to going back next year as much as I am!

The State of the Household

Last Thursday saw the end of our Month of Houseguests, when my parents went back to Boston Maine. Himself was leaving the next day for RAB, and Boo celebrated by...

...getting chicken pox. To say that I was underenthused about hanging out at home with her for a week while she battled through would be a slight understatement. But only slightly. So we shooed Daddy off for a plane to the northern end of the world*, and spent the weekend baking cookies, tie dyeing dresses, hanging out with some friends and going to see "The Princess and the Frog". And what do you know, due to thewonders of partial immunizations**, yesterday Boo went back to school! I can only hope she didn't proclaim proudly to her friends and teachers "I have chicken cocks!", a phrase she came up with while sitting on the can over the weekend, almost sending her mother to the hospital with hysterics.

The weather has vastly improved in the past couple of days, and I'm looking forward to the weekend, when we get in the car and trek down to the southern end of the world* to pick up Himself on Sunday. The part I'm looking forward to is not the five plus hours in the car to Cornwall, but getting to "camp" at one of these at the end of it. If you can call sleeping in a "tent" with walls, a woodstove and real beds camping. The girls and I will get to have some more quality time together hanging about and tending our chicken coop on Saturday, and we'll head down to Land's End on Sunday to get a tired, saddle sore Daddy. A friend recommended this organization to me, and it turns out she's been to this actual farm with her kids and they loved it. Here's hoping the weather continues to cooperate!

* That would be the UK northern end and the English southern end.
** She managed to get one of the two course chicken pox vaccines before we left the States, and her case was so mild as to be unnoticeable. We totally skipped the icky blistering oozing itching stage. Hallelujah!