Note the various people holding their collective breaths. The screamers. The hair blowing straight back and turning gray at the roots. The sort of shocked horror and also the obvious question mark that is in almost all of our minds about why we ever stepped into this crazy ride. And then look at Mr. Calm there in the back left – making dry gestures at the camera. That’s how we got into it.

It was fitting that this picture was taken in our last week in England. It sums it all up.

We had to go to Legoland in our last week. Of all things. And that was because we had promised our children for months that if they all got their math facts in the correct times we would take them to Legoland at Windsor. And they did it. And so in the last week, when I should have been packing and selling things and scrubbing walls and generally being productive . . . I was off at Legoland being the designated adult that took children on the pukey rides . . . because it was a debt of honor that we couldn’t leave England without paying.

Loads of fun though. I highly reccomend Legoland. Do they have them in the States? I would have thought Legos were an American thing . . . but whatever the case, Legoland at Windsor is a festive little trip.

Favorite comment from the trip: We were going through Loki’s Labyrinth in the Viking Land section. And, because the kids have all seen the Minoan exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford a number of times, I said something clever like, “Let’s hope there’s not a minotaur in the center.” At which point my 11 year old son pops off and says in a terribly patronizing way, “There won’t be Mom. This is Danish, not Greek.”

You know – I could try to add a remark or two to this snappy little unit . . . but it actually says it all.

Anyway, I’m merely stopping in to tell everyone to zoom over to the Fortnightly Purse. I’ve changed things around a bit, and so the giveaway is on another page (a whole extra click you have to go through) . . . however, it’s worth the trip because this time the giveaway is one of the new, not yet released, Amoretti Summer dresses! So head on over to enter!

Also, make sure to notice that we’re now also selling scrap bags of the fabric used in the production – which is loads of fun. So trot along and see it – and meanwhile I will continue my absurd maneuvers here attempting to get ready to move this family across the ocean again! (6th time in 3 years. Not for sissies I’ll tell you that much!)

3 guesses where Ben and I were invited last night. And no, it wasn’t an end of term Hebrew translation party. Give up? Well, I never would have guessed it either. We were invited by Blenheim Palace to attend an evening of “live music, champagne, and canapés.”

Now – even more shocking than the fact that Ben received this invitation (through a long and rather complicated series of circumstances that aren’t really that exciting) is the fact that he said yes we would go. I was adamantly opposed to the scheme . . . I mean, we clearly don’t belong at an event like that, and I was pretty sure we wouldn’t fool anyone into thinking we did. Plus, who would we talk to?! We didn’t know a soul there. Another problem that I was quick to spot – what on earth do you wear to an evening of champagne and canapés at Blenheim Palace???? Ben doesn’t own a dinner jacket (and he’s about the only man in Oxford who doesn’t I think) and I don’t have a family tiara to bust out. Ben looked squarely at those problems and saw merely an opportunity for free champagne and canapés at Blenheim Palace . . . which he thought looked like a net plus. But, just to humor me, he asked when he RSVPed what the dress was for the evening, and they told him “smart”. That of course led to some extensive googling. We’ve discovered what “smart casual” technically means . . . and for those of you who are interested, it means (for men) tie, jacket,sweater . . . you have to hit 2 out of those 3 things, and I think the collared shirt is assumed. Anyhow, we’ve mastered that one, but what exactly is “smart”? After the googling session we decided Ben would wear a regular suit and tie (quite absurdly, that’s known here as a “lounge suit” and I was quite shocked the first time Ben received a beautiful invitation to an evening event that specified he wear a lounge suit! That was another googling session.) Anyway, I thought I’d wear a dress, but not an evening gown. After Ben decided we would go I dismissed the matter from my mind, and decided that I’d worry about it when the time came. Each day has enough trouble of it’s own you know.

And the days are having plenty of trouble of their own. We are on the last final wild screaming slope of the England roller coaster – and I have sick amounts of things to get done. I feel like I have 8 pots to keep hot, but only 4 burners on my stove! So what I’m saying is, yesterday we were supposed to leave at about 5:15, and at 4:15 I was still trying to list items to sell on ebay, and get dinner in for the kids, etc. I had also not managed to shower yet . . . all day I was thinking I’d just do that when I got ready to go.

So needless to say, I spent that last hour ping-ponging around the house . . . super speedy shower, and then lots of rushing around with a towel on my head and one shoe on – that kind of thing. But, in the end, I pulled it together and got myself suitably spruced up.

Now – rewind a week. We took the kids to Warwick Castle a week ago for Knox’s birthday expedition. We spent all day in the sun. I forgot the sun tan lotion. I sizzled my shoulders and arms to a complete crisp. They were a shocking cerise pink for the first couple days, and then toned it down to where it could possibly pass as a tan. Then I started to peel a bit, but thankfully I had gotten over that by yesterday.

Mark the sequel. We arrived at Blenheim Palace, which is the residence of the current Duke of Marlborough and the childhood home of Winston Churchill. It’s also the most staggeringly huge palace and grounds you can imagine. In fact, the wall around the grounds is 11 miles long. The grounds are gorgeous, with a lake, and extensive parkland, and formal gardens, and Churchill’s victory monument and all in all it’s quite amazing. Our little event was taking place in the Orangery. Here are some pics so that you can get a bit of a feel for what we were up against here.

This is the bridge over the lake. Unbelievable isn’t it?

Here’s a picture of the palace from the air.

These are the water gardens.

More of the gardens.

The Orangery from the outside.

And, finally, the Orangery from the inside.

Ben had gotten me a completely beautiful black silk cocktail coat for Christmas which I had never worn, and I thought it would be a good chance to wear it last night. However, we got to the palace and parked, and I decided I would actually rather leave it in the car. I wasn’t sure if there would be anything to do with it, and I didn’t want to carry it around all evening. So I left it, and we went in. I was in a black sleeveless dress . . . which is crucial to the rest of the story. We walked in to the Orangery, and my first thought, I have to admit, was not the beauty of the room, but a quick relief that we were dressed appropriately – and actually were on the dressier side. That was good. I got a glass of champagne, and started to admire the gorgeous room. Suddenly, I had one of those horrible premonitions, and looked down at my arms.

Absolutely, unbelievably, my entire arms were one huge peeling, flaking mass. Seriously – as I walked I had a little cloud of pixie dust dandruff floating around me. And with a black dress no less. In my hurried racing shower, I had given my arms a good scrub with the loofah, and zinged out the door without pausing to put on any lotion or anything! And between the mixture of the loofah and the soap, I had turned my arms into the biggest dandruff event of the season! I mean, I’m talking BIG peeling flakes – not just a bit of a dry skin problem. Huge swaths of my arms were coming off by the second, in sheets the size of newspapers. And, my coat was in the car. Every time I brushed up against Ben his black suit coat was completely dusted over.

Luckily, we didn’t know a soul there . . . and if I hadn’t just posted it up on the great wide web, no one would ever have had to have known about my molting problem. I could have just pretended it was someone else who didn’t have the sense to wear a cardigan sweater . . .

All in all, it was a truly beautiful evening – and we had a great time. The last chance we’ll probably ever have to go to a party at a real, live palace . . . and it’s just fortunate that I’ve already snagged my Prince Charming and so I didn’t have to worry too much about my little personal flake-a-thon. I just made sure to keep brushing off his coat sleeves every two minutes or so.

However, I think perhaps this whole thing needs to be qualified. I have now gone on the record about two separate English grocery items that are downright weird and pretty much impossible to comprehend. Actually, come to think of it, I’ve probably spouted off about a number of other English products over the last couple of years. Eggs come to mind, and hot dogs.

So perhaps in the interests of fairness, I should pause for a brief moment and spotlight a few items that I LOVE here in England and that I won’t be able to find in America without a lot of effort and toil and expense and bother and frustration. Things I’ll have to import or special order or grow myself or something.

1. Broad Beans
Now, probably a ton of you will instantly reply that you can get broad beans perfectly easily in America and you eat them all the time. However, in Moscow, Idaho, I’m pretty sure that I can’t just grab a whole handful of them at the grocery store whenever I want. If I want them I’ll have to grow them. And I’m also sure that I can’t just buy the seed packet at the grocery store either . . . or even the garden supply. I checked, and the only place I can find the seeds online is from a “rare heirloom seed” sort of mail order place. So even if it’s humanly possible to get broad beans once I’m back at home, I will miss the ease of chucking them into my grocery cart with the milk. They’re in season now, and Judah loves to shell them for me. Then you steam them with asparagus tips, chuck in some cherry tomatoes, toss with a cider vinaigrette, and sprinkle goat cheese over the top, and you have a side dish to die for.

2. Purple Sprouting Broccoli
Same situation applies here. No doubt I could special order the seeds and whatnot. But here I can just grab it for dinner. (Ok, I actually can only grab it here when it’s in season . . . but I don’t think I’ll be able to grab it in season or out of season once I’m home.) This is gorgeous stuff and I’ve gotten heavily addicted. You eat it with the leaves and all . . . boil it first, and then stir fry for a second with olive oil and garlic and red pepper flakes and squeeze a lemon over it and a bit of Maldon salt . . . I’m going to miss this one for sure.

3. Clotted Cream.
I don’t know if there’s any hope for me on this one as I obviously can’t grow it myself. It’s possible that I could spend a lot of time trying to track down and special order it . . . but I bet I won’t. I’ll just sit and mope. Do you see that fabulous golden crunchy crust . . . and the nice oozy cream? There’s nothing comparable at home I’m pretty sure. Maybe you big city people can get it . . . but I’ll be limited to what I can locate in the great metropolis of Moscow. And that means I’ll have to resign myself to missing it.

There are others . . . loads of others as a matter of fact. But I have to go make dinner now. And the rest of you should make sure that you don’t miss the chance to enter for a taste of another of England’s less forgettable foods!

This is just a little something that I need some input on. What we have here is an item I run across frequently at the grocery store. It always catches my eye, and then I always pick it up and have a little ponder about it. I’m still stumped.

It’s a squeezy packet that is located on the shelf with the pasta sauces. It sits all alone there, amidst the bottles and jars of bolognese and puttanesca. There are no other squeezy packets in sight. Just this little loner American One.

The thing that’s always tough for me with this specimen is not just the fact that it’s being chalked up to my country. It’s the ingredients list. You can’t read it in the picture, so allow me to report on what is in this little squeezy packet:

INGREDIENTS: 1) Organic Tomatoes; 2) Organic Pumpkins; 3) Organic Sweetcorn; 4) Organic Orange Juice; 5) Organic Lemon Juice; 6) Organic Garlic

That’s all.

Apparently what you’re supposed to do with this is boil up some noodles or rice or bake a potato. Slap it into a bowl, and then hand both the bowl and the squeezy packet to your your child. They then have the fun of unscrewing the cap and squirting a bunch of squished up pumpkin and corn all over their noodles or rice or potato. (The heat of the food warms the sauce.) This is considered to be the American approach. There’s even a little cutesie testimonial on the back in a childish font about Auntie Shari who makes blueberry pancakes. The pancake allusion is, I think, intended to convince us that they are conversant with American cuisine in all its forms and know all about what Americans eat in a whole variety of situations . . . not just what they put on their pasta (and potatoes and rice). They’re experts as a matter of fact – probably because of their link with Auntie Shari who tells them all about it.

If you delve into the question on their website, they make some vague remarks about Thanksgiving. I think what happened here is that they realized that at Thanksgiving Americans eat pumpkin, and Americans eat corn. Presumably Americans also eat tomatoes and oranges and lemons and garlic . . . . possibly at Thanksgiving, but if not then, they likely do at other times of the year. So they whizzed it all up, shoved it into a squeezy packet, and now try to hornswaggle the trusting British public into squirting it onto their children’s baked potatoes as an exercise in foreign cuisine and cultural education.

Am I missing something? Is there an American tradition here that I’m not acquainted with? Have I been gone that long? Are all of you out there industriously mashing up pumpkins and corn together and squirting it onto any and every carbohydrate base? Is it so popular that it’s gained international renown? Or am I right in thinking that they made this one up out of their own pure brain and stuck the American flag on it for no real justifiable reason at all?

Well the big news here at Lower Farm House is that the cows have moved back into the pastures for the Spring. They are entirely picturesque and unbelievably loud. The pasture, I should mention, is directly outside the wall of our house and front garden – so the mooing is not the far away mooing of distant cows. There is a pasture on either side of our house, and when the cows in one side catch sight of the cows in the other then they both break into a complete fit and moo back and forth over the walls at one another like the woman wailing for her demon lover. It’s quite startling when you’re not expecting it. Especially when they all get into the spirit of the thing and the whole herd pitches in. In fact, just a few minutes ago I was sitting here in the living room, sipping my morning coffee, pyjama clad children eating their breakfast in the kitchen – when I was suddenly jolted out of my calm complacency by a deep, reverberating moo that seemed to be coming from the sofa about 5 feet behind me. I wheeled around, and there in the window above the sofa was an enormous cow head looking in at me.

Perhaps I haven’t been clear enough about the very imminent nature of the pasture. It’s a large pasture, and is surrounded by various things – a creek, a hedge, a wall, a fence . . . and our house. The wall of our house is built straight into a rock wall that extends out both directions from the house. This means that my living room window is essentially a window in the wall looking into the pasture. Am I making myself clear? There are no intermediate steps between the pasture and my living room. Oh hang on. I found a picture of my house, taken from the pasture. Here you go.

Do you see that one lone window in the side there? That empties into my living room. My couch sits directly beneath that. And thus, when it sounded like the mooing was coming from the couch, it essentially was. I grabbed my camera and snapped a quick picture – of this.

Yes I know the glass is a mess. But look what gets rubbed all over it.

After this particular cow moved slightly so that I could open the window without bashing it on the nose, I managed to open it up and get a picture of more of the group.

It’s quite an idyllic early morning view isn’t it? (This picture, not the previous one. It’s only idyllic from certain limited angles.)

Anyway, the other night it was time for kids to head up to bed – but poor little six-year-old Hero was still in the grip of a creative fever and really desperately needed to finish cutting out the outfit she was designing. So I let her take it up to bed with her to finish . . . and when I went up to check on her, this is what I found on the top bunk.

In case you’re not clear, that’s a shirt and a skirt – complete with a little patch pocket on the front. And yes, I did remove the scissors from her bed, and carefully scootch the outfit out of the way, and put her blankets back on the bed, and get her tucked neatly and cozily in for the night! (A note about what she’s wearing: She doesn’t usually sleep in Ben’s skivvy shirt. It’s just that there was a also a play being produced that evening and she was cast as a sheep. She obviously didn’t change back into her PJs before climbing up to finish off her cutting. “Where on earth is this child’s mother?” I can hear you asking. Unfortunately she was also in the grip of a creative fever and was downstairs trying to finish off an outfit herself . . . )

So a couple of weeks ago we had a very fun day with some Americans who were passing through Oxford . . . whom we had never officially met but knew of through this blog. (Hi Kelly!) Anyway – we had a lovely time with them, and they sent some pictures our way after they got home. And here is the one which they kindly took of my favorite tree! I’m not entirely sure what kind it is, but it grows on those crazy twisty trunks just outside the University Church (St. Mary the Virgin) and when it blooms you can see it from up and down the High Street – a big pink exclamation mark in the middle of all that stone. The church, incidentally, (if you can say “incidentally” about something like this) is where Thomas Cranmer was tried for heresy and from which he was drug out to be burned at the stake. It’s also where C.S. Lewis preached his “Weight of Glory” sermon. And you see that left pom-pom of blooms? Right beneath it are the two gold fawns in the doorway which were in the picture Mom posted after their trip – the one with the lampost outside of Brasenose College.

Don’t you sometimes wish that you knew what the story was? I would really love to be able to read that script and know what part he was playing. He just drifted about out there for a while . . . muddling around in the hedge and then circling around in the grass.

In case you can’t quite tell what it is, here’s another shot at it.

Just to be clear . . . we’ve got Judah here in a fencing mask, wellies, a belt with a sword, I don’t think you can see the fire poker because it’s tucked under his arm, and then the two stuffed animals. Guesses? Perhaps he was after the Questing Beast who was quite possibly lurking in the hedgerow? Croc-idols that needed to be slain? Usually when he goes out to play he’s armed to the teeth and kills dragons and bad guys and spiders in quick succession . . . but the stuffed animals are the addition to the narrative that I find myself wondering about.