Last night was cra-to-the-zy. I was woken up by banging and bonking going on upstairs. Soon after, Tate woke up. Perfect! The noises continued upstairs, and added to the bonks and bangs were now very loud voices. I thought that maybe it was the staff getting ready for breakfast, until I looked at my phone, it was 2:30am!!
I grabbed Tate and tried to get him back to sleep, but every time he would drift off, the noises would startle him back awake. The noise continued for about an hour and then Todd woke up. He decided to go upstairs and see what was going on. When he went upstairs he said he figured out there were several rooms of girls in their early 20's making the noise. He knocked on the door and was met by a sassy girl who acted like she had no idea what he was talking about or knew what time it was, and when he asked her to be quiet, she was like "uh okay." Nice.
Needless to say these girls didn't quiet down until 5:00am and that is when I finally got back to sleep. So when Thatcher and Tagg woke up and wanted to go to breakfast, I was like a zombie. We ate breakfast, and then when it was time for Tate to take a nap, I took a nap too. When we finally all got up from naps and got ready, we headed out to drive to the Cotswolds!
The Cotswolds are Englands hill country, which were once made famous and rich by the sheep and wool that came from this area. There are fairytale like village scattered throughout the countryside, and it is amazingly beautiful. We were blown away by the charm and beauty. We loved every minute of today! Get ready for major picture overload!!
Looking out of my window on our drive...
The first village we stopped at is Bibury. It is so quaint and tiny, but also so picturesque. We saw a beautiful wedding taking place as we drove by the main church, and it was straight out of Pride and Prejudice! We parked on a side street and as we got out of the car the church bells were ringing wildly for the wedding. It was really fun.
We walked along the country roads enjoying the quiet, with the birds singing. Here are some of the homes we saw as we walked.
Everywhere we went Todd kept saying that he wanted to buy one of these homes and live here. He was obsessed.
Todd and the boys...
This house was being repaired, everything is made out of the stone!
Me, Thatcher and Tagg.
Here is the church that just had the wedding...
Is it weird that I love old cemeteries? I really do. I love to read the headstones...
We wandered around the church grounds admiring the headstones and the beauty all around us!
The entrance to the church, it still had flowers placed from the wedding...
The inside of this cute country church.
Beautiful stained glass window! I love stained glass windows, if it was up to me all our windows in our home would be stained glass. But then our neighbors would hate us and we would be the freaks for the neighborhood!
Pretty wedding flowers!
I found someone outside of the church to snap our picture really quick...I love this one!
I took this picture below because I loved the rock fences everywhere. They reminded me a lot of New England. I can't even imagine the work that goes into building something like this fence. But it's a good idea to do it, we all know that good fences make good neighbors!
From the main road we came to this little foot bridge...
We took it across looking at the beautiful scenery all around us! It turned into a gorgeous day!
I couldn't get over all the stone! Even the roofs!
Once we crossed over there was this little row of homes that were so cute!
It was funny because there were a lot of tourists taking pictures of these homes. Poor people who live there!
We found a path that headed into this shrubbery...
And another bridge!
Once you cross over you come to this cute little rustic path with cows on the side.
We took the path for a little while and then it lead out to the main road and a little cafe, which we decided to stop at and have some lunch.
It was part of a trout farm and so they of course served trout in pretty much everything on the menu. I had the trout fillet, the boys each had a trout cake, and Todd had a trout croque. Tate decided to skip the trout and just get an old fashioned cheese sandwich. The trout was delicious!
Oh how I love these two guys!
While we were waiting for our food to arrive, I went into the gift shop and saw all the cute jams, jellys, preserves, and creams they had for sale. So cute.
Tate took a ride on the little post truck...
After lunch we got some of their homemade ice cream, it was divine!
I love this picture of cute Tagg sharing his ice cream with Taters!
Tate trying to get the ice cream out of the cone...
Nice! Got him mid-lick!
This boy is getting too big!! He even looks old eating ice cream now!
Tate wandering around with his little rain jacket on. He is so cute with it on! He looks like ET waddling around!
We headed back to our car and I made Thatcher pose for a picture next to the darling row of Cotswold stone homes...
Love my boys...the four T's...
The main road...
Classic red phone booth picture!
Taters and Todd.
Can't get enough of the cuteness and charm!
Bibury was wonderful and I highly recommend stopping there if you are in the UK. So worth the drive. We headed next to Stow-on-the-Wold another Cotswold village.
We got to Stow a little after 6:00pm and everything was closed! Dang, they shut down early in the Cotswolds! But we still enjoyed walking around and looking at the village.
In the main part of town...
The church in the center of town.
The entrance.
Another cute cemetery. Is it weird that I call it cute?
In the back of the church we found this little path called the church walk. This path goes behind all the buildings out to the main road.
Post office on High Street.
They have lots of Antique shops in the Cotswolds.
We left Stow-on-the-Wold and headed to our last stop for the day, Chipping Campden. On our way I asked Todd to pull over so I could take some pictures of the beauty all around! The English countryside is GORGEOUS!
The boys loved all the sheep everywhere!
"Look some blue sky, let us chase it!"...
We arrived at Chipping Campden well after 7:00pm, and the beauty of this little village was insane. It was quite because all the tourists were gone for the day, or at dinner. We felt like we had most of the streets to ourselves to walk around and take it all in.
Could you die?!
Thatcher LOVED seeing the real thatched roofs! They were so cool to see and I can't believe people really keep them up still!
High Street.
Loved this little door and the flowers...so pretty!
We found of course the main church, and we walked around and explored.
Yet again, another cemetery!! It was fascinating to read a lot of the headstones. So interesting to try to picture their lives. Sad part was that a lot of the women died from childbirth. I am so grateful for modern medicine!
Ahhhh cute boys! They do love each other through it all. Sometimes you wouldn't guess with all the fighting, but they do.
Todd, the boys, and a bunch of dead people. Okay, that is kinda creepy, but it was so beautiful!
Todd stopping to smell the roses!
Ha! Perfect timing for this shot!
We we found that we had seen enough churches and cemeteries for one day, we left and walked back to our car. I took these last two pictures on our walk back...
We were all starving on the ride home and since it is hard to find kid friendly places at dinner time around these parts, we were surprisingly happy to see the Golden Arches! We stopped at McDonald's for dinner and filled up on crappy fast food! But sometimes that crappy fast food really hits the spot. Especially the large diet coke with ICE.
It was such a great day! The Cotswolds are so beautiful and it was so nice to hike around hearing the birds and the quiet and looking at all the beauty of the British countryside. Even the boys had a really good time! When we were driving they were playing on the iPads and Tate took a nice long nap on the way home.
We got home and put the kids to bed and now we are headed to bed too. Long, exhausting, but really great and fun day!
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