England Day 4

Wednesday was our travel day from London to Northern England.  We checked out of the hotel and got a cab to the car rental place.  After over an hour, we were finally on the road!  Not a fan of Thrifty Rental car and the run around they gave us over not being able to prove that our credit card company covered insurance for rentals.  That would have been nice to know before we left home!  Oh, and they didn't have the child safety seats ready even though Allan had called the day before to comfirm.

Anyway, the weather slowly got worse the further north we went. It even snowed big, fat, wet flakes for about an hour.  Actually, if it had to snow or rain hard any day, the travel day is the one I would choose.  We kept the girls pretty entertained with movies on the iPad, coloring, and looking out the window. Both girls took little naps.  Sometime after lunch, Harper started to complaining that she felt like she was going to spit up (that's what we call vomit).  I didn't think much of it and thought that maybe she needed to go potty or just go back to sleep.  Luckily, Liz had plastic baggies in her purse because Harper yelled, "get a bag!" and promptly filled 1/3 of a sandwich bag with her lunch :(  After that, she acted fine.  I'm sure it was motion sickness since she was in the way back of the car and the roads were kind of windy.  Allan was doing a pretty good job of driving on the wrong side of the road, but I wasn't such a good passenger.  I could not sit in the front seat because my depth perception was off and I kept feeling like we were too close to other cars and trucks.  It was very unsettling to me to be in that seat and not in control of the car.  I was much better in the back with the girls as my distraction.

We finally made it to Burley in Wharfedale with no more sickness and only a little yelling about the map and directions :) Aunt Gaye, Rachel, and Jacqui had done such a nice job getting the house ready for the 6 of us.  The girls were on blow-up mattresses in our room and they were excited about "camping out".  They were also given a little stuffed duck and lamb that they just loved.  I'm not sure if they were being shy or what, but both girls went upstairs as soon as we got there and played together for about an hour while the adults caught up.  I think they needed a break from us, too. 

The whole gang - Uncle Stephen, Aunt Gaye, Mark, Andrew, Rachel, David, and Jacqui - got together to eat dinner.  Gaye is a terrific cook and made homemade desserts every night!  We are so thankful that they took off work and arranged their schedules to hang out with us while we were there.  After dinner, we took the dog, Walter, out for a walk.  Oh, how the girls loved that dog!  

Walter is still a puppy, albeit a huge one, so he had plenty of energy and curiosity. 

This is the path that we took up to a hilly field where we could all run around and play.  It was getting to be dusk, so you can't really see what a beautiful view they have .