Belton House

Hello All!
Another wonderful week has come and gone and we were lucky enough to have a few more adventures. Last week when we went to the Tattershall Castle we decided to become members of the National Trust which is an organization that manages many of the historic properties throughout England. The National Trust was founded in 1895 with the mission of saving the nation's heritage and open spaces, and they have succeed as far as I am concerned. The National Trust is the largest voluntary conservation organization in Europe. There are many old homes and estates, 65 pubs and inns, 49 churches, nine monasteries and many parks and gardens. With our membership we have access to all of the properties, and we hope to see a large majority of them! Every time we are leaving town, we check our guide book to see if we can stop at a National Trust along the way.
This weekend we decided to go to Nottingham to stop by an Ikea for new dining chairs. Along the way we found the Belton House, which is a beautiful 17th-century English country house set amongst beautiful gardens and a magnificent deer park!  We stopped and stretched our legs while we toured this beauty!Due to it being so late in the year, most of the houses have gone to winter hours and the actual house was not open but we could still tour the grounds.

The leaves are starting to change!

Em says hello from the garden.

The first of the gardens. The large building in the back is called an "orangery" which we just learned, is not actually a place to grow oranges (who would have guessed) but another term for a greenhouse or conservatory type of building. Silly us, we were looking for the orange trees!

Bellmount Tower

The Belton House

The Belton House

Emily loved all of the room to run around and the beautiful grass!

We found the maze on the grounds.

The ivy changes colors too! Absolutely stunning!

The back of the house, you can see exactly how large it truly is.

The Deer park, right next to the parking lot. There were at least 15 deer just walking around.

Emily loved watching the deer.

Tattershall Castle Pumpkin Party

Hello all! We are one week into our British adventure and loving every minute of it! We love our village and the surrounding areas, which we have been exploring for the last week. There are unbelievable antiques, amazing pubs and restaurants and most importantly, lively villages with loads of charm and character.

 Since Nick has some time off (FINALLY!) and there is the opportunity we are trying to take advantage of as many of the local events as possible. Today we drove up the road to Tattershall, about 15 minutes away, to the castle for the "Pumpkin Party". We had seen the castle, while driving to look for a car, which we picked up on Friday, and knew we needed to get there soon and this was the perfect chance!

 

  There was a "fancy dress" (costume) contest for the children so Emily got to dress up as a strawberry/watermelon depending on who you ask, thanks Nana, and we got to tour the castle!

Tattershall Castle has its origins in either a stone castle or a fortified manor house, built by Robert de Tattershall in 1231.This was largely rebuilt in brick, and greatly expanded, between 1430 and 1450. Once again, the age and history present here is mind blowing!

 The stain glass windows throughout were beautiful!

 They had a room set up with different costumes for the children to try on.

 Throughout the entire castle were engravings of those who had visited before. We made a game trying to find the oldest engagements. All of the engravings from the 1800's were very easy to find because of the amazing, almost professional penmanship. Above is an engraving from 1828. Below is the oldest we found, 1642, although we question the authenticity.

 

We were able to go all the way to the top of the castle. This is the view of the church next door and the beautiful country side. Everything here seems to be a brighter side of green, must be all the rain! 

 Emily loved playing in the "ward" or the grassy area in front of the castle.

  She also loved the balloon models that were being made for the children, until she promptly popped hers, still a little young for balloons.

Emily won 3rd prize for the girls in the fancy dress contest. She was very excited and will be featured in the local newspaper.

We had a wonderful family day, exploring one of the many amazing things about our new home. We are feeling very thankful for to call Lincolnshire our home for the next 3 years and can't wait for more adventures!

Loving London

Hello all from across the pond! We have arrived in our village, Woodhall Spa, and are loving the exploring! On Friday night we left the states and arrived at Heathrow about 10am Saturday morning, London time. After clearing immigration and customs, then dealing with Nick's missing bag and Emily's bag that had exploded during the transit, we went to the hotel. We decided to stay near the airport since we had so much luggage, instead of staying in London. The rest of Saturday was spent napping, the entire family took a wonderful 3 hour nap, and finding dinner. Sunday we all woke feeling recharged and ready to tackle London!
We had decided that we would just go to London for the day and see what we could see, without doing any of the official tours etc. We took the bus to the underground station and 45 minutes later we were getting off at the Westminster Abbey stop!  Immediately out of the underground we looked up to see Big Ben welcoming us to London! What a sight! We had beautiful sunshiny weather for walking around too, what a treat!

 Big Ben and a double decker red bus

 As we were walking around we found an entrance into Westminster Abbey that wasn't crowded and was free to walk around so we decided to take a look!

 The windows had beautiful iron work that looked out into a lush green courtyard.

 Inside the first hall where burial sites and different types of art work/cravings to commemorate those who had been buried there or significant times in history. The piece above was all iron bent and shaped to make letters. 

 This was a burial site for a man buried in 1117. It was so unreal to be walking through a building with that much age and history!

 Above is believed to be the oldest door in Britain, built sometime around 1050!

 The ceiling of the cathedral building, beautiful stain glass windows surrounding the entire area.

 Emily enjoyed exploring and learning about her new country's history.

 After leaving, we found the entrance to the Westminster School and the Dean's office. We figured we would go ahead and enroll Emily, only the best!

Then we stopped for lunch at a delicious little Italian restaurant and had to try a local beer! The Meantime London Porter was delicious!  While we were eating lunch, London decided to show its true colors and started pouring rain for hours. We stayed inside little shopping centers and local art galleries. While heading to the underground station we came across an open market and couldn't pass up the opportunity to look around. While we were looking, Emily fell asleep so we decided to stop for one last beer before waking her up to get on the underground. We stopped at The Nags Head, which we found out that there had been a restaurant named The Nags Head in that same location since 1607!

We finished our beers and left for the hotel. Only after we arrived back at the hotel did we realize that Emily's stuffed doggie loved London so much he decided to stay. Hopefully the big city is treating him well! Today we are exploring our local village, new blog to come!

Closing a Chapter

I don't feel like often we get to see a chapter closing right before our eyes. We tend to look back on our lives and can only then see that we slowly transitioned from one chapter to another, with a new job, new co workers, then possibly a new house and then you are in a completely different place in your life than you were 3 years ago. With the military lifestyle, we get all of those events at one time. As we finish up the last few items on our to do list and head out for our flight to London in a few short hours, I am looking back on this last chapter with fond memories.

At the beginning of Nick's tour in Va Beach, 3 years ago, we could not have imagined what the next years would hold. We were 2 months away from our wedding with no clue what married life was all about. Nick was also right out of flight school heading into a fleet squadron with a deployment 2.5 months away. Oh the things we have learned!

We had our wedding and said goodbye for the next 6 months. I know Nick learned a lot about his squadron and what it meant to be on deployment, but that's his story to tell. I made friendships with the fellow wives that I know will last a lifetime, as we all supported one another as we waited for emails, planned the guys homecoming and drank LOTS of wine. During that 6 months I also learned a lot about myself. I learned that I could maintain a house by myself, manage a rental property across the country, fix things that broke and believe LOTS of things broke (rule #1 of deployment, if it can break, it will!) and most importantly I could survive!

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 Then Nick came home and we enjoyed every second with each other and new friends while deployment #2 loomed on the horizon.

The end of December 2011, 3 months before deployment #2 we found out that little miss was going to be joining our family.  We were obviously very excited but also very upset with the timing because Nick would miss all but 1 month of the pregnancy and Em would be almost 3 months old when he met her. Once again, all of the wonderful friends I have made in Va Beach stepped up and took such wonderful care of me throughout the pregnancy. I am so grateful for their love and support. Ladies, if I didn't thank you then, thank you!

 At my baby shower. Surrounded by those who loved and supported me. Thank you ladies! (Wish I had a picture of everyone, this is the best I could find)

Nick came home in Nov of 2012 and completed our family. The last year we have been spending time together and really enjoying spending time with all of our dear friends. I have loved spending time with you all and consider you my Va Beach Family!

As I look back at my time in Va Beach, the thing that stands out above the location, our home, the beach or the fun events we have enjoyed, is the people we enjoyed them with. I cherish the memories made with each of you and can only say, "See you soon!"