Birthday Girl, School's Out, and a Beach Day

June brought us Abigail's birthday, the end of the school year, warm enough weather to go to the beach, a visitor from the States, a trip back in time to the town of Lavenham, and a proper English afternoon tea. 

We kicked off the month right with Abigail's fifteenth birthday celebration! We enjoyed some delicious chocolate cake before making her work for her presents with a little target practice/scavenger hunt. 

Inside each paper cup was a little clue to the location of one of her gifts. She had to shoot the cups with a nerf gun and once she knocked one over she could go in search of her present.

Once she found them all we gathered in the living room so she could open them. It was a fun way to make the birthday fun last just a little while longer. Her favorite gift may have been a subscription to Good Housekeeping magazine, which is probably not your typical most wished for item for teenage girls. Then again, Abigail is not your typical teenager.

The school year finally ended! Those final few weeks of school are so busy that I was happy to make it to that last day and the promise of a slower life over the summer break. All of the girls had a good school year and handled the change of schools and move to a new country like pros. Military kids are pretty amazing.

Natalie worked hard this year in fourth grade and in the last quarter reached her goal of earning all A's! She received the Principal's Award for the fourth quarter, made some good friends, participated in her first science fair, and got her first concussion this year. We're already looking forward to fifth grade and having Natalie wrap up fourteen years of Moran girls in elementary school!

Samantha is a quietly hard-working kid. Sixth grade and middle school didn't throw her at all and she can now boast that she's earned straight A's for four years running! Lakenheath Middle School was good for Sam. I'm always pleasantly surprised by the number of kids who wave and say hello to her when we're running around the base. It's good to see that she's found her place and made friends.

Abigail's first year of high school was a success. She played trumpet, french horn, and bassoon in advanced band, ran cross country in the fall, played on the varsity soccer team in the spring, received an academic letter for her amazing brains, and was elected as her class secretary. We're not sure how she's going to top that her sophomore year!

I've heard that junior year is the hardest year of high school and Emily would maybe agree. Besides her heavy academic load (which she rocked, btw), she played varsity volleyball and soccer, was selected to attend a week-long student leadership conference in Germany, and was elected as student body vice president. She's already looking forward to/stressed about senior year!

For about a week in June, we had some sweltering hot weather. Temperatures were easily in the 90s most days, and air conditioning is something that's not really common in England. We bought a fan for each bedroom in the house, did our best to keep the hot sun from shining through our windows and heating up our house, and ate only meals we could make without any heat at all.

We even took a day and went to the beach, despite my hatred of sand. We packed up a big blanket, sunscreen, some watermelon, a bag of tortilla chips, and a big batch of homemade salsa and drove to Sea Palling for a day of fun in the sun. The water was a cold and refreshing and just what we needed after so many days of oppressive heat. Just a couple of days later the temperatures finally dropped back to what we expected of summer in England - hooray for highs in the 70s!

Emily's friend Bethany came for a visit and arrived at the tail end of June. We were all excited to see Bethany again - Jared likes to joke that she's his favorite daughter! Having company is a great excuse to go and do lots of fun touristy stuff so that's just what we did.

One such touristy outing was to nearby Lavenham, a village full of half-timbered buildings. Walking around feels a little like stepping back in time. The Godric's Hollow scenes from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, were filmed in Lavenham although we didn't know that interesting tidbit until a friendly guy at Tourist Information asked us if we were there to see the Harry Potter sights.

Natalie standing in front of DeVere house, the exterior of which was used as the birthplace of Harry Potter. When we took this pictures we just thought it was a cool looking door with a tiny door inside a bigger door!

I loved all the crooked houses in Lavenham! We walked from one end of town to the other, stopped at the church, and I kept having to run and catch up to the Emily and Bethany because I wanted to take pictures of absolutely everything.

We had an appointment for afternoon tea at the Crooked House, the orange building in this photo. It was a combination tea room and art gallery/antiques shop. We took a little peek upstairs while we were waiting for our tea and sandwiches. The steps were crooked, the floors were crooked, the walls were crooked, and it was all such a lovely jumble of art, flowers, lace, and old furniture. 

We asked for fruit teas, not really knowing what we might end up with. They brought us two delicious varieties of tea, smoked salmon sandwiches, ham sandwiches, and cheese sandwiches. That was plenty of food right there, but we'd ordered the whole shebang and there were still scones with jam and clotted cream as well as cakes to eat. We powered through the scones - so good I could eat them every day - and took our cakes to go. 

And there you have the highlights of June! It was a month of happiness, sunshine, and love. Can you believe half of 2017 is gone already?

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