Finishing the school year strongly feels like a mighty task this year, and Sarah Mackenzie at Read Aloud Revival put together a fantastic end-of-year offering to help: six videos by authors teaching kids how to write in various formats. Since I'm always wishing I still had teachers giving me writing assignments, I did the first project along with the kids: writing creative nonfiction. Children's author Miranda Paul instructed us to pick one cool fact that interested us, to ask some questions, and to present our cool fact and what we learned about it in a creative format.
A couple of weeks ago I made a cup of tea for Noreen and she gave me the highest compliment by saying it was such a good cup, but of course, "you've lived in England," she said.
When we first moved to North Yorkshire I was very intimidated to make tea for people, but I paid attention and learned a lot, and though how you make tea can be a matter of taste, and the English have strong opinions about it, I feel fairly confident in my basic tea-making abilities.
And now I will tell you how to make a proper cuppa in haiku form, per "my" writing assignment.
I've found British black tea to be much stronger than black tea I buy in America, so especially if you're adding milk, it comes out much better if you use British tea. And thankfully British tea is pretty widely available in the U.S. now. Yorkshire Tea is definitely worth searching out; it's strong, but I like my tea strong.
I'd heard that it was important to always begin with fresh water in the kettle, and I remember my mom saying even with making iced tea that the water shouldn't boil too long. If it boils too long the water loses oxygen, and it will make your tea taste flat or bitter. When Noreen makes tea for us, she turns off the kettle as soon as it begins rumbling good.
If you're making tea for one in a mug, black tea should steep for at least three minutes. I prefer five, and if you're using American tea, it should definitely be five.
If you're having sugar, add that first so it can dissolve well, and then add milk to taste. The above is a pretty good color to me. But what if you're making a pot? Well...
One thing I definitely didn't know before living in England was the practice--some might say the necessity--of warming the teapot before brewing the tea by adding warm or boiling water, swirling it around and then pouring it out.
The formula I learnt was to have one tea bag per person and "one for the pot."
Now, go forth and make a good cup of tea!
Yesterday I spent some time looking at pictures from April 2015 for an Instagram account I started a few years ago. We've been able to visit so many beautiful places in the past 5 1/2 years, and I liked the idea of having a place to catalog some of those lovely landscapes and details. Early on I fell into the habit of only posting pictures from the same month of previous years. I love following the movement of the seasons in pictures.
The first April day I re-visited was a Friday when I think we had a church meeting wrapping up our Easter Holiday Bible Club in North Yorkshire. K.J. drove with the kids while I took my camera and walked on a public footpath behind the kids' school because I'd caught a glimpse of lambs earlier in the day. This was our first spring in North Yorkshire, and I was terrified I'd somehow miss lambing season. The thing about seasons is that they come once a year, and then they're gone. You have to pay attention in the moment. I'm happy to report I didn't miss out on frolicking lambs in 2015.
In addition to photographing lambs, I grew slightly obsessed with bees going about their business (beez-iness, bizzzz-iness?) in the spring and summer. England's moderate climate, and the English genius about gardening means flowers that don't prematurely wither away. They last so much longer than in Alabama. I spent a lot of time that first summer watching the bees in the lavender outside my kitchen window while I washed dishes.
I got this lucky shot experimenting with the macro function on one of my lenses at Newby Hall. It still brings me a lot of joy. I also got a lot of joy watching these lambs play follow the leader that day.
Ella took ballet lessons in a small village nearby, and while I usually went back home while she had her lesson, one April day I took a walk instead, exploring a public footpath. I was captivated to live in a place that had ridings.
But of course the most magical April night of all was when our entire family got to be present for the birth of twin lambs at a local farm. I was over the moon that night.
That seems like a good stopping place for now. Thanks for coming armchair traveling with me. It's fun to re-live past Aprils and to look forward to the day we can leave our houses and do some exploring once more.
When we lived in England we were constantly seeing new-to-us beautiful places, and I was constantly taking 200 pictures of said beautiful places; thus, I have a lot of pictures I never had time to review and pick out my favorites. These were taken on a day out in the Yorkshire Dales near Skipton in February 2016.
It was the half-term break from school, and we went to Billy Bob's Parlour for authentic American cuisine with some good friends. It is THE place for pancakes and bacon with maple syrup, there are great play areas for kids, and the views are incredible.
These sheep look really different from other breeds in North Yorkshire to me, but I can't figure out which breed they are. Maybe it's just all the hair on their heads that's making it hard to tell.
We always combined our trips to Billy Bob's with a walk around Bolton Abbey. It's close by, and on this day in particular I couldn't get over how stunning the location is and mentally applauded those that chose this location for building a priory back in 1154. Can you just imagine the quiet, beautiful, sheltered life this would have been?
I thought 2016 J and E were doing some Ninjago Spinjitzu moves here, but they just informed me they were playing at secret agents who had to make it up the hill by sundown.
Ever-changing skies are a constant in North Yorkshire. Very often in the winter it would be grey all day and then turn absolutely glorious just in time for the sun to set.
As you can see from the view from above, my secret agents are making it up the hill.
They made it! And then we went back down again.
These walks always brought me a lot of joy, and the drive home wasn't bad either.
I've been slowly sorting through pictures from 2017 for a family yearbook I'm making, and I loved these from a beautiful August night last year.
Summer days are long in North Yorkshire, and sun shining always feels special, so one night after dinner we decided to seize the golden hour and drive up to the top of Sutton Bank for the view James Herriot called, "the finest in England."
You can see for miles and miles from this vantage point. I love the late-summer fields ready for harvest and all the wildflowers and heather.
The path wends its way along the top of the bank above the Kilburn White Horse. It's a landmark hard to find when first pointed out to you from a distance but impossible not to see once you know what you're looking for.
I love having my family for scale in this picture. It helps capture the vastness of all the open space around you. But you can't help but notice the small things, too.
My boys tried to pinch a little heather for me to take home, but that proved harder than expected.
It came up roots and all, which feels like it's probably a violation of national park rules.
I took the most up-close picture I ever got of the white horse as we drove down the bank toward home, but I loved this last one best with the sign and the little house with the white horse in the distance.
Each week I've been going through pictures from various adventures and outings from the past year that I didn't have time to edit or record, like this rare solo-parenting adventure I had with the kids after dropping K.J. off in Morecambe at the beginning of his coast-to-coast bike ride last May.
I wanted to take advantage of the beautiful day and being on the coast before making the drive back to North Yorkshire, but my specialty isn't planning things like K.J.'s is...it's making it up as I go along, which sometimes results in a few false starts, as it did on this day. We began with a meandering walk back to the car park where we'd left our car after seeing K.J. and the other cyclists off on their journey.
The start of the bike trail was a lot further away than K.J. had thought, so it took us longer than expected to get back to the car, by which time we had received a parking ticket. I was upset about it, but James was so bothered by our criminal activity I had to calm down and reassure him that all was well, it was only a parking ticket. Then came the task of deciding where to go next. I was traveling without cash, which is always a mistake in England, and perhaps anywhere you have to pay for parking. After spending a lot of time trying to get the pay-by-phone option to work in the small village car park we were in, we decided to look for the nearest McDonald's instead. I didn't want to risk a second parking ticket that day.
Even McDonald's was an adventure. The parking lot was so small and crowded that after circling it twice I finally followed the lead of a few other cars and just parked on the side of the entrance road. I spent most of lunch trying to pick out a good coastal town to visit and finally decided upon something K.J. never would have, because it was a little out of the way.
North Yorkshire is northeast of here, but we took a little detour through the south side of the Lake District. As a beach trip, we were unsuccessful. We ended up at a beach with signs warning of quicksand, which can be dangerous on this coastline, so we basically waved to Morecambe Bay and hightailed it to the park and a really lovely walking trail.
Adventuring is sometimes a bit of a bust. We had a mantra whenever we went out in North Yorkshire: "What do we need for an adventure?" The answers usually included happy hearts, grateful hearts, and the right shoes. I should add pocket change to this list.
We didn't have the beach day we were after, but we did discover the most amazing trees on our walk to the town in search of refreshment. We walked because there was no way we were leaving the parking space we were able to pay for by card.
It really was such a gorgeous day. You could feed the ducks, and the grass was a carpet of daisies. We found a cafe and cold drinks, Millionaire Shortbread for the kids and a quiche for me.
There were a couple of trees in England that had colored leaves in the spring, and I thought they were such a beautiful contrast to all the new greens.
The journey home from here should have been straightforward, but of course it wasn't with me in the driver's seat. I missed a turn, and so instead of skirting the Yorkshire Dales National Park we went right through it in all its winding glory. It was a glorious evening all around, but we were in the middle of nowhere, and at one point on a narrow track that was barely a road, up and down hills, making the kids carsick. Everyone was tired and hungry, but on the bright side, we also stumbled on the remains of a castle connected with King Arthur. Getting lost in England has its advantages.
Where are we?
It wasn't a perfectly planned adventure, but I loved it anyway. As you can see, even getting lost, I kept stopping to take pictures because it was a beautiful detour. I think we all ate chips for dinner and went soundly to our slumber when we arrived home.
