End of the School Year Festivities

The last few weeks of school were lots of fun.  With plays, sports days, concerts, and Avery's graduation of Junior School, there was much to celebrate. 

Avery had a great sports day, placing in all his races and surprising us a bit with his long jump at 3.82m! This year, Avery has discovered his love for running and Athletics (track and field).

Avery's school spent the last month of school focused on their play "Frankie and Me." Not only was the play very entertaining, we were really impressed by all the great singing that the boys did during the show.  Avery was a member of the chorus, and also played a female ghost towards the end of the play.

Yes, that's Avery on the left with some amazing hair!

 Alexa got her chance to show off her musical talents as well at her schools Prize giving day, singing "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound of Music.

 

Mia and her friends got to take center stage twice at the Strawberry Serenade, her Junior School concert.  This first video is a poem that she and her friend recited after winning the poetry competition in their school.



 



 Mia also performed as part of a group doing a song from "Matilda the Musical."

 

Overall, it's been a great 2 years at these schools.  It was really hard to say goodbye, but we look forward to more fun times in Burnt Hills!

Hidcote Gardens

The following day, on our way home, we stopped at Hidcote Manor gardens to stretch our legs, have a bite to eat, and tour a beautiful English garden.

Bath

After being blessed with 3 days of gorgeous weather, I suppose it was inevitable that we would eventually have some rain....and boy did we get it when we went to Bath...how appropriate! We spent most of the day at the Roman Baths, and then wandered around through the city a bit to get soaked. How amazing that the people living in Bath had know idea that they were living above a Roman city until a little over a hundred years ago.  They are still finding more rooms and buildings underground that will someday be open for people to see.

The Roman Bath museum, not only showcase the bath house, but also artifacts from the neighboring temple and the outdoor altar. It was so amazing to see such old artifacts from a time when Jesus' disciples were spreading the good news.  The pagan temple was build around 60-70AD, and the surrounding bath complex was built over the next 300 years or so. 

The mouth of the spring

 Pieces of the decoration on the front of the temple.

In front of the main bath



 

After the baths, we explored the city a bit and got drenched!

In front of the Royal Crescent

 



Stonehenge and Avebury Prehistoric Stone Circles

On our way back from the music festival, we spent a couple nights in the Bath area.  On our way to Bath, we stopped by Stonehenge and Avebury, 2 very mystical stone circles, just 4 or 5 thousand years old.  It was a gorgeous, sunny day.

I found Stonehenge to be quite mesmerizing, out in the middle of a wide open field. So old, so mysterious, so much that we don't know...

A short drive away, we found Avebury, which is a much larger stone circle with a small village in the center.  The stones are very large, and spaced very evenly apart.  We enjoyed a lovely afternoon and ice cream within the circle, and walked among the sheep in the stone laden fields.

Big Church Day Out

For our first music festival experience as a family, we couldn't have asked for a better one.  We were blessed with a rare 2-days of glorious sunshine and temps in the mid 60s.  We arrived in West Sussex, down on the southern coast of England in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday.  The festival was held on the grounds of Wiston House, which was a beautiful venue.  Here is a photo of Mia standing with Wiston House in the background.

Anyone who really knows me, will know that Christian music is a HUGE part of my life.  So as you can imagine, I was quite excited about this festival.  So many bands that I listened to in the US were coming and some British and Irish artists that I've fallen in love with over the last 2 years were there too!  I was most excited about a relatively new band called Rend Collective Experiment and they did not disappoint.  Through our church here I've also become very familiar with the songs of Matt Redman, and it was such a treat to have him be the final act of the weekend....finishing of course with 10,000 Reasons.  

We all had a fabulous time and look forward to attending more festivals in the states when we come home.  Hopefully we'll be able to get some friends to come along next time ;-).

 Here are all the girls, sporting our new BCDO T-shirts...a lamb with big headphones on!

 One of the early acts on Sunday...Jars of Clay!

Derbyshire Well Dressings

Over the last week we've had a chance to see some well dressings in our surrounding area. A well dressing is a decoration for a well, usually consisting of wood and clay adorned with flowers, seeds, rice, and other natural materials, in a mosaic fashion.  Many well dressings are biblically themed, but many are also themed after artists, stories, etc.  The first set of well dressings I went to were in Tissington, which I was told were not to be missed.  One theory of how the tradition began in Tissington was after the Black Death of 1348-9.  Although the population in the rest of England were ravaged by the plague, in Tissington all escaped, and the immunity was ascribed to the purity of the water supply.  It became the custom to decorate the wells in thanksgiving.  Another story about the Tissington wells comes from the severe drought of 1615.  Despite the severity of the drought, when thousands of cattle perished and crops were lost, the five wells of Tissington flowed freely and the surrounding district had cause to be grateful for the unending supply of water from the village. 

I found Tissington to be a lovely little village, and the well dressings were moving with their beauty and messages.

 

Last weekend, we took the kids to the well dressings in Etwall.  Most of these dressings didn't seem to be actually decorating wells (as far as I could see), and they were primarily secular in nature. The girls got to try their hand at pressing the flowers into the clay, which was a lot of fun.  Here are a few that we saw in Etwall.