Broadstairs is closed.... until... Tomorrow

This is a short of picture book of our latest adventures

Beckah, Annie, Allison, and I (all being from the west coast) were in need of seeing the ocean. So we headed towards Broadstairs, which boasted some touristy things to do.



We should have known that things were not going to go our way from the horizontal rain coming at us all day. In the morning we were still optimistic that things would turn our way. Again we should have used our misinformed train conductors as clues to our impending demise. Due to their "helpful" advice our 40 minute train journey turned into an hour and a half.



But finally we made it and were all set to tourist this place up! Too bad luck wasn't on our side. An amazing common thread followed us everywhere we went that day.



(Don't be alarmed... we still laughed our way through the day!)



The theme for the day was CLOSED



First stop on our journey was Dickens House (where he vacationed in the summer)



CLOSED (only open on Saturdays and Sundays during this time of year. We were there on a Friday.)



How about Crampton Tower?



CLOSED... opening for the season the very next day! Was the world playing an awesome joke on us?



Well how about the Crampton Tower Museum? I bet you can guess the answer to that question.

CLOSED



Even the ticket window for the Broadstairs Rail Road... closed... luckily we had already purchased our tickets.



We decided to eat away our sorrows with sweets.

Yum... French Fancies... Chocolate



But do not fret, or feel sorry for us!



We still had a blast every rainy and wet step of the adventure.



And laughed ourselves to tears. (Have I mentioned that I have awesome friends!)



In the words of Allisoni (borrowing from Casablanca)... we'll always have Broadstairs!




I can't wait to see where our next adventure takes us!

In Honor of Spring!

I love flowers. Who doesn't? They're these perfect, beautiful, symbolic, fragrant things that just burst spontaneously from the ground. So here's a little post for my fellow floraphiles. My faves:

Tulips ~ The first year of our marriage, Jesse and I lived in a tiny basement under a shop. In the winter, it felt like a cave. A cave with 70s carpet and 2 rooms. But in the spring, hundreds of tulips popped up all around the yard, and we had them in the house for weeks. Then it was a sunny cave with tulips--a vast improvement.

Dapne ~ If you've ever smelled a daphne bush, you know what I mean. This flower means Spring. It's my favorite smell in the whole world, including chocolate cake, my mom's perfume, old books, fresh-cut grass, and my grandparents' garage.

Crocus ~ After long, long winters in Rexburg, these dear faces pop through the snow around the Taylor building, and sometimes you see little groups of people huddled around them, cheering them on.

Hydrangeas ~ These are my Oregon coast buddies. I can't wait to have them in my yard.

Oh Wisteria. ~ I have had a life-long love affair with Wisteria. My window faced the sideyard as a kid, with a view of the fence and the gravel. One spring, we got a wisteria plant and my parents put it in the sideyard. Love. If I had my way, my entire house would be covered in Wisteria. Don't care if it takes over everything else. Some things you just can't fight.

Stargazer lilies ~ I took a semester off one fall in undergrad and worked at a call center for one of those online florists. It was a terrible business, during a displaced time, and I used to look at these lillies during calls and imagine having my own house someday and keeping Stargazers in the kitchen.

Zinnias ~ I was not a spoiled child, except in one respect: we had a pool. My Dad, a landscape architect, designed our pool to look like a pond, with a sort of kidney bean shape, a black bottom, and planters. In the summer, these were filled with Zinnias in all the colors of a sunset.

Peonies ~ At Pike Street Market in Seattle, the stands just spill over with Peonies in the spring and early summer.

And so many more.

These Days

On Friday morning, our dear Emma's father passed away. The last time we saw him was Christmas, which he spent cracking sly grandpa jokes. He was sick for only a few months, and their family was able to all be with him when he died. I can't speak for the rest of the Pilgrims, but at this stage in our lives, when sometimes it feels like we've sort of scraped together our little temporary family, it has been so nice to be a very small part of a very real family. Here's to good examples and families holding together.