ludgershall castle

Ludgershall Castle is not far from the house...I've driven past it lots of times. Tom has taken the kids but now it was my turn!  Well, our turn.  Plus Jordan.  Anyway, it was a Sunday afternoon and so so time to get out of the house and so we did and it was great!  We had a few going back and forths to the car for things forgotten but in the end we were all there in the castle ruins galavanting around.  Jordan collected lots of trash to throw away, doing her part to keep Britain lovely.  At one point  Connor sat down and put his chin in his hands and said, "I need a rest from all this adventuring."  I love that kid.  It was so fun to have Tom with us on an outing again.  I have missed him very very much and so have the kids.

alum chine

Stake Conference Weekend and we headed back to the beach for some family time.  Unfortunately I trusted the GPS instead of myself and we ended up taking a bit of a long way there.  Lame.  The day was lovely...sunny and not too windy.  Not warm by any stretch but do-able.  The sand was cold which is always such a strange feeling.  We ate lunch in the car to save us having to carry too much stuff down to the water but still I am amazed at how much I have to haul around because it's not warm enough to just let people get wet.

Emma was good with the boys.  She played a game with them wherein there was castle building and then castle smashing.  I approve of this game.   Honestly I was surprised that the kids were done as soon as they were...usually the beach keeps us for hours. But today people kept having to use the toilet and were thirsty and were hungry and were tired and had sand in their boots.  Sigh.  But we weren't home all day being mad and so that's still a good thing right?

stowe and croughton and cranky connor

Kelly told me about this great place called Stowe which is a National Trust property up near Croughton and since I am ALWAYS at Croughton it seemed like a good place to take a walk before shopping, etc.  I thought Connor would love it as it was a gorgeous day out.  I was pretty much wrong.

He did like the golf cart ride out to the beginning of the walking trail.  He did okay while we walked through the little secret garden with the waterfall and flowers.  After that...he was pretty much done.  We saw and heard an amazing herd of sheep and then I had to carry him a lot of the way around this really lovely place full of follies that I really wanted to see!  I will be going back another time.  He did manage to walk a little bit of the way.  I had some chocolate which he used as his "energy" which helped.  It was chilly but sunny and so it was worth it even though Connor was a bit of a crank.

Imperial War Museum

London again, all alone.  This time I was going to go to the Imperial War Museum...mostly because I heard about an exhibit called "Lee Miller: A Woman's War."  Oh my ward...this woman.  I just copied and pasted this from leemiller.co.uk
************
Model, muse, photographer, artist, war correspondent & gourmet chef.
Born: 23 April 1907, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA.
Died: 21 July 1977, Farley Farm House, Muddles Green, Chiddingly, East Sussex, England.

Lee MILLER first entered the world of photography in New York as a model to the great photographers of the day such as Edward STEICHEN, HOYNINGEN-HUENE and Arnold GENTHE.

In 1929 she went to Paris and worked with the well known Surrealist artist and photographer Man RAY, and succeeded in establishing her own studio. She became known as a portraitist and fashion photographer, but her most enduring body of work is that of her Surrealist images. She returned to New York in 1932, and again set up her own studio which ran for 2 years and was highly successful. It closed when she married a wealthy Egyptian businessman Aziz ELOUI BEY and went to live with him in Cairo, Egypt. She became fascinated by long range desert travel and photographed desert villages and ruins. During a visit to Paris in 1937 she met Roland PENROSE, the Surrealist artist who was to become her second husband, and travelled with him to Greece and Romania. In 1939 she left Egypt for London shortly before World War II broke out. She moved in with Roland PENROSE and defying orders from the US Embassy to return to America she took a job as a freelance photographer on Vogue.

In 1944 she became a correspondent accredited to the US Army, and teamed up with Time Life photographer David E. SCHERMAN. She followed the US troops overseas on D Day + 20. She was probably the only woman combat photo-journalist to cover the front line war in Europe and among her many exploits she witnessed the siege of St Malo, the Liberation of Paris, the fighting in Luxembourg and Alsace, the Russian/American link up at Torgau, the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau. She billeted in both Hitler and Eva Brauns houses in Munich, and photographed Hitlers house Wachenfeld at Berchtesgaden in flames on the eve of Germanys surrender. Penetrating deep into Eastern Europe, she covered harrowing scenes of children dying in Vienna, peasant life in post war Hungary and finally the execution of Prime Minister Lazlo Bardossy.

After the war she continued to contribute to Vogue for a further 2 years, covering fashion and celebrities. In 1947 she married Roland PENROSE and contributed to his biographies of PICASSO, MIRÓ, Man RAY and TÀPIES. Some of her portraits of famous artists like PICASSO are the most powerful portraits of the individuals ever produced, but it is mainly for the witty Surrealist images which permeate all her work that she is best remembered.

Lee Miller died at Farley Farm House in 1977.
***************

Her photographs were amazing.  They had some of her clothes and things too, but I could not get over the photographs.  She photographed a lot of women doing different things during the war but she did things like photoshoots highlighting women with short hair...something not "fashionable" but necessary for many women working in factories who could get injured or killed if their hair was caught in machines.  She did photo shoots about the super simplified practically rationed clothes people had to wear.  Anyway, I had such a...relaxing isn't the word though not having all my kids there was more relaxing than if I didn't.  I think it was intense.  So so glad I went.

I looked around the rest of the museum too and they had some really interesting exhibits.  One about spies, one about a typical family during WWII.  But then came to the part about the evacuations of kids into the country out of London and then I had to be done.  I watched some of the video footage of these masses of children just on their own and I felt physically sick and decided it was time to be done.

I was lucky enough to be able to meet Kelly for lunch at Wahaca right next to Waterloo as she was coming into the city for the evening.  She's so fantastic.  So another successful London outing. Go me.

antwerp and driving home

As far as getting out of the rental house goes, it wasn't so bad.  I had totally and completely over packed on the food but other than that it was pretty easy.  And everyone was pretty cool about a quick picture in front of our place before we left.

It was only a 90 minute drive to Antwerp, Belgium where we were going to have our stop for the day. I really wanted to go the Cathedral of Our Lady to see the altar pieces and go through the Sint Annatunnel.  Those were the goals.

We parked and could not find the tunnel.  We saw signs but it turns out it was just in this random building across the street from where we were.  We took the elevator down 31 meters and then we got to the tunnel.  It is a 572 meter tunnel under the Scheldt River in the 1930s.   I thought it was pretty cool but not all members of the family (coughMarycough) were happy about it. But I encouraged them by reminding them that there was a playground at the other end!  So it was mostly okay.

After getting everyone settled at the correct playground (not the first one we found but the second one) Emma and I walked back through the tunnel to the Cathedral of Our Lady to see the altarpieces by Reuben.  Oh. My. Word.  The paintings were just so incredibly beautiful.  The Cathedral was beautiful.  I just don't get over it.  This cathedral was almost like an art gallery there were so many paintings. Sigh of happiness.

After we left the cathedral we stopped to get some Belgian chocolate (a must!) and found some super weird bathrooms in the visitors center before we met everyone back at the car and fed everyone lunch while we drove.  We made it to the Eurotunnel, got to leave on an earlier train and made it home early enough to unpack and not have it be a hard evening.  Thank you Netherlands!  It was awesome. Also there is so much laundry to do...I may cry.

madurodam at den haag

Tom walked to the beach with Ben this morning before the rest of us were even up!  So pretty.

Going to the Hauge or Den Haag was for sure on the list. Two places I really really wanted to go: Madurodam and Mauritshuis which is the museum where many of Vermeer's paintings are displayed. Well, we made it to half of them.

It was a chilly, dark morning and as Madurodam was outside I was feeling nervous about it just not being fun but Tom was all in and so we packed up the car and drove for about an hour to get to Madurodam.  It was snowing by the time we arrived.  We bundled up in tons of layers before going to get our tickets and luckily there was enough warm clothes for everyone.

Madurodam is this amazing place with tons of miniatures of Dutch places - cathedrals, town halls, tulip fields, etc.  But interspersed with that are tons interactive things for the kids to play with - you can see how much cheese you weigh, make a trade route for your ships, play soccer in a little indoor field, etc.  The kids were completely entertained!  It might have been snowing but whatever!  Connor, surprisingly, was super thrilled with the little buildings.  This cracked me up.

Here is the cool story as to why this place is even here!

Mrs B. Boon-van der Starp was a member of a foundation for the Dutch Students Sanatorium. In this sanatorium students with tuberculosis could obtain treatment, and could also study. Financial support was needed to pay for their convalescent care. Mrs Boon-van der Starp heard about Bekonscot, a miniature park in Beaconsfield, England. This park generated large profits, a large part of which was donated to a hospital in London each year.

After a meeting with Mrs Boon-van der Starp, George Maduro's parents donated the funds needed for the Madurodam project, as a memorial to their son. S.J. Bouma was appointed architect of Madurodam, and visited Bekonscot because Mrs Boon-van der Starp wanted the new park to be similar.

"The miniature city was named after George Maduro, a law student from Curaçao who fought the Nazi occupation forces as a member of the Dutch resistance and died at Dachau concentration camp in 1945. In 1946 Maduro was posthumously granted the honor of Knight 4th-class of the Military Order of William, the highest and oldest honor in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, because he had distinguished himself in the Battle of the Netherlands against German troops. His parents donated the money to start the Madurodam project."

I thought that was pretty amazing.

As a bonus, a huge nautical playground was recently opened which the kids had a complete blast in.  It was a pretty awesome park.  Then we went to eat lunch and bought way more food than was necessary and not a lot of people ate it which was quite lame.  They had an awesome gift shop where I bought a magnet of my favorite Vermeer painting.  I knew there was no way we were going to be up for going to the museum and what I wanted was for everyone to have a good day so I put that dream back up on my shelf.  Some day.

We did a few more things before we left (putting out little ship fires was pretty awesome) and we kept to the 15 minute rule and left before anyone started to cry! Connor even said, "I love this place! Can we come back?!"  Win!!

In the evening Connor and I stayed home and watched Nick Jr in Dutch and ate treats while Tom took the older 3 to the pool and closed the place down.