Updated: 11 Interesting things about our Trip

So, this will be my last entry about our trip--I promise!! I'm sure you are all sick of reading about the trip, but since this blog really is more for our family to remember our trip, I'm going to write down a few more things so that we can remember them! :)

1. Garrett's new lady. (She was such a lifesaver!) Before we left OR, Garrett thought it would come in handy to buy a GPS while we were over there. We used it for a bit here in OR and I thought it wasn't very handy because for one thing, it didn't even have our street on it's map and second of all, it would take us to places that we knew, in a different and longer way. So, I was skeptical. But, once we got over to England, she knew everything! So, my job as navigator was at an end. She was always calm in giving her directions and even when we would miss our turn/exit numerous times, she quickly came up with an alternative--without getting frustrated! She sure saved us from a lot of stress! We took her everywhere with us, even when we were walking around a city! She even talks with an English accent and we named her Emily.

2. Blue doors. I loved how colorful their front doors were over there. There were a lot of blue and red doors in England and we started taking pictures of them, towards the end of our trip. I was going to make a collage out of the pictures. They were so neat looking. In Ireland, they have all sorts of colors for their doors. There was blue, red, green, yellow, and purple. As we were driving down the street, Maggie said, "Wouldn't it be cool if someone had a pink door?" Sure enough about ten minutes later, we saw a pink door.

Here's just a few examples of the blue doors:

3. Some places over here in Britain and Ireland still have thatched roofs--like they did so long ago! We love the look of it! They must have something underneath the roof, so that rain doesn't drip into their houses all the time.


4. I knew England was known for it's little tiny roads, but 'Oh my gosh' are they tiny and narrow! We were really scared a few times driving down the road that we were going to hit the car going past us. On the left side of the road there is usually a bunch of plants and bushes or rock walls and then on the right side are the cars coming in the opposite direction. You either have to ride the wall or bushes or get hit by an oncoming car. There are even places in the road where it narrows down to one lane, especially if there's a small bridge coming up or a turn in the road. You really have to slow down and literally crawl and peek around the corner. One time we were going down one of these narrow country roads and came around a corner and there was this huge tractor thing coming right at us! It was truly scary!

5. To go with their tiny roads are their tiny cars. They are all so small. The biggest cars they have are about the size of my mini-van and they call them people movers. All their cars get great gas mileage--I guess because they use diesel fuel. I love all the mini coopers! Solviej--I thought of you every time I saw one! :)

6. Round-a-bouts. They are everywhere. I guess they are used because it is supposed to decrease congestion at intersections. Some of them get a little crazy and have 3 or 4 lanes going around this circle and you have to be in the correct lane depending which exit you take. There's one in Swindon, where Garrett worked, that is well-known and called "The Magical Round-a-bout". It has five smaller round-a-bouts inside one big one. Talk about confusing. Round-a-bouts are especially confusing for Americans because if you want to turn right, you have to go left into the round-a-bout to go right. They are helpful though if you missed your turn because you just drive up to the next round-a-bout and go all the way around and head back to where you missed your turn. I did get a chance to drive once or twice while I was there. It was pretty scary--and I only went through one or two little round-a-bouts. But just being on the wrong side of the car was weird, not to mention driving down the wrong side of the road. Even though I didn't drive much, I got used to riding on the wrong side. Just being in the car while Garrett drove, I'd try to help him to remember to stay on the left side if he forgot (which was just once or twice). But now that we're back here, I find myself thinking 'which side am I supposed to be on'? Garrett really got used to the driving over there. On the freeways, the right lane is the "over take" lane; which is the lane you are supposed to use to pass. Garrett swears that the right lane here in America is the fast lane. It took me a while to convince him that it's the left lane that is the fast lane.

7. Their shopping carts in the grocery stores are called 'trolleys'. And boy are they hard to control. I guess on ours the back wheels are locked so they don't turn every which direction. But on theirs, all the wheels are free rolling and you really have to work at keeping it going in the right direction.

8. I didn't know this before I went, but Great Britain and Ireland go by military time. It took me awhile, but I finally just memorized all the times, like: 21:00 was 9:00pm and 19:00 was 7:00 pm, etc instead of subtracting 12 every time I wanted to know the time.

9. I'm not sure if this is how it is all over England or just at the place we were, but we didn't have any screens on our windows. And of course they don't have air conditioning, so we'd keep the windows and doors open during the day to keep a breeze in. The bad thing was, was that this place was like Arachnaphobia. There were huge spiders all over, everywhere. Especially all over the outside of the house. So since we kept the windows open, we had spiders in the house all the time. They would especially come out at night, so I kept all the windows closed at night and the house would become really hot. Garrett didn't like me for that, so he went and bought some fans. But I really hate spiders and they were SO BIG! You can't blame me for closing the windows.

10. People smoke a lot more over there--it seems. Maybe I'm wrong, but it sure seemed like everyone was lighting up everywhere we went. It was nasty.

Here are some fun pictures of the girls that I thought you'd like to see.

Bella before we left for England

Wow--look how she grew over 6 weeks! (Right before we came home)

Paige wearing Lydia's cowgirl boots--hasn't she gotten big?

Sleeping Bella

The girls being silly with daddy's Scottish hair.

There is a little smile behind that binky.

Watching movies

The girls went out and had a picnic one day in the back yard.

Bella coming in for a smooch

This is what Bella is best known for!!
She's so cute when she sleeps!
Being silly with wax from some cheese.
The instigator of the silliness
A water bottle was one of Bella's favorite toys.

So, I thought of one more thing that I found interesting in England.

11. In our place, the washer and dryer were combined in one machine. Odd, huh? It was really small, too. I was only able to wash like 3 loads of laundry, if I was lucky because it took like 3-4 hours to wash and dry a load. So, I'd have to do at least one load a day. After being home now for awhile and doing laundry--I've realized how quick a wash cycle is and how short it takes to dry a load. I love it--especially that I can put more than 3 pairs of jeans in at once!!