Jim's birthday weekend extravaganza

(Or: Jim and Claire ditch the kids and sleep in for a couple of days).

Yes, it's true. After all that family togetherness, we felt we deserved a couple of days in the country sans kids. So we left them with a responsible party and headed to the Cotswolds for two days of country walking and overeating and sleeping until 8:30!!!!!

Alas, our socks were not super cool:
But these two chickens were too busy chasing each other to notice.

We walked the Eckington Circular along the River (umm...I forgot the name of the river, but will try to remember to figure out which river it was and update this blog).

People are very generous in the country. We took a few wormy apples along with us for sustenance:
Birthday weekend Jim:
And standing on a questionably stable dock? Fishing platform? We don't know, but there were a lot of them:

An old bridge:

After our walk, Jim and I went back to our room to put on more deodorant and then headed to a nearby market town, Leyton. It was full of cute shops and bookstores, some of which were grossly overpriced. I mean, I would love Danish cutting boards with beautiful pictures of fish, meat, vegetables and poultry on them, but not at £40 a pop!

Jim under an old building:
And in an old market with some funny old signs:

I looked very classy and demure in my shorts and birkinstocks, amongst all of the history (you can take the girl out of America, but you can't take the American out of the girl):

We put together a model of the old school house in the old, historic market town.
Actually, Jim basically told me where to put the pieces and I only posed for this picture. I am not good at math or puzzles (and this counted as a puzzle), so hopefully our girls will get some of those smarts from their dad! I'm pretty sure they are both already better at puzzles than I am.

After resisting some delicious looking cakes and sharing a pot of tea, we decided it was time for our second walk of the day: The Malvern Hills. They were spectacular. To get up to the top, involved a lot of steps. Here is Jim about to ascend:
And me, half way up:
More stairs:
Jim has a rest in a valley within the hills:
King of the Mountain on his 36th birthday weekend!
And a picture that we took of ourselves at the top. We miss taking walks like this on a regular basis so much. In fact, this is the first real country walking we've done since the girls were born.
After we got to the top, I decided it would be nice to walk down the hill and to the reservoir below, which I stupidly thought we would be able to walk around (it was surrounded by fortress style fencing, which we eventually had to make our way around).

Jim looked very short and wide from above (note: he is neither):
Through the woods.
After we finally got through the woods, we had to straggle up a side road and through another wooded area where there were either a billion bees buzzing in the trees or a billion flies buzzing in the trees. It was a little unnerving, but very beautiful.

Back at the B&B we managed to shower and drag ourselves to a dinner that we were really too tired to enjoy fully. It was nice to be worn out from so much countryside, though!

The next day, we had the option of taking a bread baking course (our B&B was also a cooking school), but we decided that we needed to get back and be parents again. On our way home, we stopped at the Moreton in Marsh Show, which was a big agriculture and horse show in Moreton in Marsh (hence the name). We wandered into an arts and crafts tent, where we saw these women making yarn and tatting lace.

The next tent we went into was full of about 600 chickens, stacked in rows from floor to ceiling. This picture only shows part of one row:

And there were some seriously weird looking chickens in there, too! Jim posed with his personal favorite.
This chicken looked like a muppet:
This one had a bouffant:
And this one was a silky chicken:

And you can't go to an English festival without the obligatory Morris Dancers. These were, hands down, the most friendly and enthusiastic Morris Dancers we have met in all of our time in England. I think it was because they were rural Morris dancers. Jim and I have decided that, were we English, we could definitely be Morris Dancers. In fact, their style dancing is the kind that brings me great joy. It involves lots of skipping and jumping and swinging your partner round and round. But I'm pretty sure that being American automatically excludes you from Morris Dancing.

Despite spending the first 17 years of my life on a farm, I know nothing about farming or farm animals. Even though we weren't able to pick the winning bull, we enjoyed watching them getting their hair done for the big show!

Back at home, it was time to celebrate Jim some more! Evie and Millie were ready and waiting with a delicious birthday cake. Evie has been practicing singing happy birthday since her birthday in January and Jim's birthday was a highly anticipated event!


Happy Birthday, Jim!