Day 2: Avebury & train to Paris

On our second day in England, Neil and I woke up early and went on the most beautiful run in the Cotswolds. Cannot even tell you how many times I have daydreamed about that run since, it was absolutely magical and one of the very best parts of the trip for me. When we got back, Abigail was just starting to get going, so she walked down to the village to check it out while Neil & I got ready to go. 

The drive back towards London was so gorgeous! We kept an eye out for the chalk horses in Wiltshire and sure enough...

Just very very cool. 

We debated between going to Stonehenge and Avebury and ultimately decided on Avebury after talking to some British friends (we were a little tight on time this day and worried about tour times at Stonehenge, etc. I do wish we'd been able to go because we were SO close, but I really loved Avebury. We went to both when I was a teenager and I found the original rock where my sisters and I all posed in extreme grumpiness and sent a photo to my parents for old times' sake.  

Thankfully this teenager was not at all grumpy and feeling MUCH better! 

I love how you can just wander between the stones (and there's a village built through a solid half of it!). 

Lots of sheep grazing too and wandering through the stones, which made it all feel very lovely and pastoral and idyllic. 

Here's a shot of the circle going right up (and eventually through!) the village! 

Then we drove back to London, dropped off the car, breathed a sigh of relief about the whole "driving on the other side of the road" thing, and walked to Kings' Cross. The very nice Avis guy gave us such sweet tips about what bits of the city near us he thought we would like, but we didn't have time to check them out. Gosh, seriously everything I saw I wanted to just dig in and stay for weeks. I would really really really love to live in England at some point. 

Such a beautiful station! 

Had to detour on our way to the Eurostar.

Then we sat there forever because our train was delayed (but thankfully it was NOT cancelled as most of the others were, thanks to rail workers' strikes). So we finally got into Paris as the sun was setting...

We tried to get metro tickets but we went to the wrong machine and the lines were super long, so we ended up just walking to our AirBnB from Gare du Nord. I would...not do this again. I was tired and it was not a super nice part of the city so it was kind of stressful. 

But also PARIS. 

Then we found our AirBnB, figured out which one of the restaurants on my list was still open and seating diners (we ended up at Dame Tartine and yes the servers were truly as kind as the reviews say, definitely the perfect place to go on your first night). 

Escargot of course...

Then a bunch of tartines, sorry the picture is not rotated. Mine was the smoked salmon and radish one. 

Then the best creme brulee I have ever eaten in my entire life, hands down, no contest, truly amazing. We weren't even going to get dessert because we were pretty full and very tired but when we asked for the bill the waitress was truly shocked and told us we HAD to have dessert. She was not wrong. 

And then back to our AirBnb in Le Marais. Funny thing here...the walk to Dame Tartine felt SO long the first night, and then we passed it a million times afterwards and every time we passed it we were like "oh, almost home, super close now." 



Here is a very blurry photo I took out the window showing the charming little courtyard of our Airbnb, which I really loved. It was teeny tiny but absolutely perfect and the location was unbeatable. 

 

Thanksgiving 2021

Thanksgiving this year felt a little too much like last year--we were scheduled to have my sister Rosalind's family, my parents, and my grandma come visit us, but the weekend before we got sick...and just got sicker and sicker. It was a monster cold that went through our whole family and totally knocked us out, and not one we wanted to share. Rosalind, Chris, and their kids went up to Michigan to wait for us to recover...and we just kept getting sicker! Then we discovered that our cats had brought home fleas and so basically we were living in a plague house (if you've never vacuumed and deep-cleaned your entire house and washed every single washable thing while you have a fever, well, my friend, you are missing out on nothing). 

Anyway...we ended up having Thanksgiving with our little family. And we have another turkey in the freezer. :-( 

Matty brought home this cute little (very honest) paper from preschool. Pepperoni sandwiches are a big part of his life. 



Neil's birthday was on Tuesday...we were in no shape to go out and celebrate, so I made a fun charcuterie board and baked some baguettes and we had a good time. 



And by Wednesday the little boys were feeling good enough to get their second Covid shots! Hurray!!



We went on a long walk one afternoon to see the decorations downtown. 



And then started baking when we got home! 

Here's Isaac working on making my grandma's Jello while Jules stirs up a chocolate pudding pie. 

Neil working some turkey magic (we brined and spatchcocked it again this year with herb butter). 

Luke making cranberry sauce...




Jules just basically making a mess. And a pie.



Luke working on the herb butter for the turkey

Luke is always always my baking helper...he is getting so darn good at these rolls! I'm so glad Neil grabbed a picture of us together because this is one of my favorite things to share with Luke. 

Little boys setting the table...

I really loved how this came together this year; Mary Beth sent me home with the vases from their reception and I bought the floating candles in Toronto. 

Missing some people I love, but grateful to be together with people I love so dearly. 

I'm writing this on December 1st and we STILL have leftovers (that nobody is going to eat so I need to toss them). I had made quite a bit of stuff ahead of time and planned for 16 people rather than 8. Yikes! 

Time for pie and the annual Lord of the Rings marathon, which we always start after getting pie servings!



Thankfully by Thanksgiving I was recovered enough that I could do some low-effort endurance work. I still felt too weak to do any strength training, but running is basically second nature to me so I usually feel worse without it. On Thanksgiving I had to skip our friends' turkey trot (my whole family was still asleep!) so I went for a solo 10k by myself and had a pretty good cry on my run. The next day I met up with my friend Kelsey, who was visiting from Utah, and we got in 8 miles despite the cold and wind. 

Then later that day we ended up driving up to Michigan to pick some things up (like a car!) from my parents and to say goodbye to my grandma, who is moving to Utah this week. Honestly this day just wrecked me. I was so tired by the end of it (Neil and I drove up together and then drove home separately) and it was so incredibly emotionally devastating for me to see my extended family for such a short period of time and not know when I would see them again. 

But I'm still glad we were able to go and spend an hour with my grandma. 

 

And that I was able to take a picture of this plaque in the hall honoring my grandpa. 




I'm really excited for her move to Utah--I think it will be SO amazing for her!!!!--but gosh it's going to be weird knowing that she's 24 hours away instead of 3! I'm so grateful for technology that makes it easier to stay close. 

Camping: what to cook!

So I'm just going to give you the rundown of what we ate on our last trip, because that is honestly the easiest way for me to do this. I also recommend Googling camping recipes (Fresh Off the Grid is my favorite site for achievable campfire food that actually tastes good) and thinking about how you can adapt your family's favorite meals at home to the great outdoors. Also, just plan for some hot dogs, because they are somehow delicious when camping even if they're gross at home.

Our basic approach is to have a loose schedule based on what is perishable and plan around that. We also consider whether we are going to be on a super long hike or have an easier day--that factors into what kind of energy & time we will have for cooking. And then we figure out if we need to swing by a grocery store mid-trip or if we are going for a short enough time (4-5 days) that we can just pack everything in.

And here's the most important rule about camping food: NO JUDGEMENTS. Basically you are just trying to get calories into your people so that they don't drop dead of exhaustion. So yes, you might be eating differently than you do at home (which ahem is why we always bring dried prunes with us and everyone eats a handful every day) but a week of less-than-perfect food will not kill anyone. Plus when you get home everyone will be SO excited for salads.

Breakfast ideas:

• Kodiak pancake mix and add milk + eggs. This is a great way to get some protein at the very beginning of the day into our kids.
• Yogurt--our kids love the Noosa yogurts so this is another good protein one for them. 
• Bacon + something else. Usually eggs. All of our kids LOVE bacon so this is another mega hit in the mornings. Sometimes hash browns. 
• Instant oatmeal--we buy both the crummy kind that's full of sugar and the steel-cut kind that's full of dried fruit. People pick and choose and everyone ends up happy.
• Muffins--I will usually bake and freeze muffins or quick breads before we leave and then we will eat them when they thaw. This time we also grabbed some Costco muffins in Montana and they were a perfect (indulgent cake-like) breakfast on the morning when we peeled everyone out of their sleeping bags at 5:30 AM so that we could get a parking spot at the Avalanche Lake trailhead. The chocolate muffins were a surprisingly effective motivator for the kids to get up and going. 
• On the day that we break camp, we usually eat Quaker Oatmeal Squares in the car so that we don't have to deal with dishes. 
• Hot chocolate--always hot chocolate. It was usually in the 40s in the mornings on this trip and dang, hot chocolate has never been so welcome.
  
  And repeat! 

Lunches/snacks: 

• Canned beef stew (Dinty Moore somehow tastes so freaking good when camping--the kids would not stop talking about how heavenly this meal was)
• Quesadillas
• PBJS/PB & honey/deli meat sandwiches with King's Hawaiian rolls
• Chunks of smoked kielbasa, string cheese, wheat thins/Triscuits
• Gratuitous amount of hiking snacks: before we go on hiking trips we hit Costco and get all the things we never buy: variety packs of Oreos/Nutter Butters/Chips Ahoy/Ritz Bits, Sun chips, trail mix, then we throw in a few hundred Nature Valley & Clif bars, a lot of fruit snacks, beef jerky, some of those chocolate pandas, clementines, carrots, string cheese, etc. We let the kids pack their own Camelbaks with their chosen snacks for the day, they eat whenever they are hungry (they're really good at rationing things out--we always track mileage and they are aware of how long we're likely to be out) and often if we are out long enough everyone just manages to eat enough snacks that we don't end up having an official lunch. 
• Apples/bananas/plums/peaches--these don't last long but boy are they good while they do!!

this chili wasn't ready until it was already dark, but gosh it was worth the wait!!

Dinner:

• Chicken tikka masala + couscous + broccoli. We cut and freeze the chicken beforehand, then saute it with onions and peppers, add canned tikka masala simmer sauce, and serve it with couscous (which is our preference because it cooks so quickly). 
• Hot dogs--just don't squish the buns!)
• Sloppy Joes (meat and sauce precooked at home, frozen, and reheated on the propane stove. Again, watch the buns!)
• Chicken & bacon with onions & red potatoes in BBQ sauce--so so good but we did NOT put in the pound of butter (camping food yes but I do have to draw the line somewhere). 
• Boxed rice jambalaya + smoked kielbasa
• Cast iron skillet pizza--oh my heavens this is so good. We tried both pepperoni + cheese & fresh mozzarella + tomato + basil and just...so so good. 
• Tin foil dinners (kielbasa, hash browns, onions, peppers, potatoes, zucchini, and carrots--we made these at home, froze them, and then popped them in the fire the first night we arrived)
• Cornbread-topped chili in Dutch oven 
• Sausage cooked with potatoes, onions, and bell peppers

For dinners, we added in whatever assortment of veggies we had from the cooler. One night we had pan-fried broccoli, sometimes we had baby carrots, peppers, snap peas, and hummus, sometimes we've done frozen beans that we then reheat, etc. We've also done bagged Costco salads that were met with great appreciation. I just about wept tears of joy over my sweet kale salad our first night in Glacier.



Desserts: 

• many many marshmallows and s'mores
• Dutch oven cakes: pineapple upside down cake, Dr. Pepper cherry chocolate cake (everyone's very favorite), peach cobbler, etc.

Drinks:

Sometimes we have juiceboxes or made lemonade, but we usually just stick with water. When we brought the Yeti cooler this year we kept milk in it which made certain people (ahem Luke ahem) VERY happy. Everyone in our family has one Camelbak waterbottle that stays in the car, everyone except Matthew has a hydration pack (that's the 3L one I have; here are smaller 2L and 1.5L versions that the kids carry) and we also have a water purifier that we carry with us when hiking. We didn't end up pumping any water this year (on our super long hike I was just about to start filtering water and then this nice girl at the Sperry Chalet asked me if I wanted some of the Costco water bottles from the pallets they'd just helicoptered in--yes please!), but in other years when we've been in hotter climates we have used it a ton (Smoky Mountains, Rockies, Tetons) and it is WELL worth the investment. Plus it's fun to be able to actually drink from those ice-cold mountain streams! 

the day after we went to Costco! Oh you blessed baguette and Brie...

Camping: how to cook!

We got home last week from a two-week trip through the Mountain West, spending most of our time in Wyoming and Montana. We love camping as a family, and this year I was so glad that it was already in our wheelhouse since COVID made every other vacation that we'd previously scheduled into an impossibility. 

Since I started posting pictures of our trip on Instagram, I have been absolutely flooded with requests for more specifics about how we make this work: camping with six kids for extended(ish) periods of time (this trip was 9 nights). So I'm taking a few minutes to start putting together some posts about this since it is such a good way of (relatively) safely getting out of your house during COVID. 

Some basic principles: 

1) This is not our first camping trip!! We didn't go from zero to a week+ overnight. We both grew up camping all the time as kids and started camping together months into our marriage. All of our kids had been camping multiple times before they were a year old. We also did not acquire all of this equipment immediately--when we first bought camping supplies we had $200 to spend and we used it to buy a tent, propane stove, and 2 sleeping bags. 

2) Camping is a lot of work, so I straight-up refuse to camp for less than two nights. It's just not worth all the preparation and cleanup for a single night. (Now I feel this way about camping for less than a week, tbh.) 

3) One of the reasons why I think camping is a great vacation with kids is that you just have to lower your standards. Going into it, I fully expect that people will be dirty, nobody will get to bed until it's fully dark, and we are going to eat differently than we eat at home (aka: all the marshmallows).
4) We car camp--we don't backpack. We also ALWAYS stay in a campground that has flush toilets and potable water, but we don't worry about showers. (More about that in another post.) So we are not going for the most lightweight options here!

One of the most stressful things about camping is cooking: how do you feed everyone? How do you keep your food fresh? What tools do you need?

I'm going to give a brief rundown of our camping kitchen essentials (you can find lots of lists out there but this is what works for us) and then I'll do another post with the menu that we used on our last trip. We camped for five nights at Yellowstone, then drove to Helena and stayed overnight in a hotel. This allowed us to shower, sleep in real beds, do laundry, and hit Costco before we camped 4 nights in Glacier. I HIGHLY recommend that mid-trip hotel stay...it totally reset us and we were all excited for more camping, plus it meant that we weren't breaking camp, driving 8 hours, and then setting up camp again, which is a long and miserable day. Last year we camped for 8 nights straight in the Rockies and let's just say that everyone was much happier this year with real showers + laundry halfway through instead of a freezing cold solar shower and rewearing the least filthy clothing.

So without further ado, here are my camp kitchen must-haves:

1) Propane stove. This is literally the very first thing we ever bought, way back in 2003 when we were newlyweds. We literally gave it to each other for Valentine's Day! Ours is still going strong almost 18 years later. I love these because it also makes our meals portable--about half the time we will eat dinner at our campsite and half the time we will eat at a picnic site so we can keep exploring after dinner without having to make the drive back to the campground. Here's Neil demonstrating this principle as he cooks up chicken tikka masala on the banks of the Firehole River in Yellowstone--we were camped probably an hour away and eating dinner this way gave us an extra four hours to explore the nearby geysers AFTER all the other tourists had cleared out to get back to their food places! Oh yeah! 

2) Cast iron skillet. Seriously the best--holds heat perfectly, cooks beautifully, easy to clean as long as you have one of these scraper things (no soap!). I like that this version has handle covers, because yowch, you do NOT want to forget how hot that handle gets. (Note: it won't handle things like eggs well so if you're doing eggs, bring a nonstick skillet.)

3) Dutch oven--you will also want metal tongs for moving coals, dutch oven liners so you don't spend all night scrubbing out your dutch oven, and a lid lifter. Plus match-start briquettes. Make sure you get the kind with the flat top so it holds coals without dumping them into your delicious food (ask me how I learned that one).

4) Water jug--even if you're camping somewhere with potable water, you do not want to have to walk to the water source every time you need a cup of water! Get one that's at least 5 gallons with a spout) (we have 2 similar to these and one of these that we use when we have the space for the insulated ones).

5) Cooler--for years we had an inexpensive Coleman cooler (okay maybe we had 3) but we upgraded to a Yeti Tundra (we have the 125 because we have a million kids), and holy cow, LIFE CHANGING. We bought new ice in Helena and that was it. Seriously so blown away by the Yeti--it's expensive, but worth it!

6) Saucepan with a lid or other receptable for boiling water (I always just grab one from the kitchen).

7) Cutting board and knives--I love these color-coded knives so I can designate ones for raw meat, another for veggies, etc.

8) Collapsible sink--some campgrounds will have an area where you can wash dishes; others will have you wash them at your site and collect the gray water. We use the sink either to carry dishes to the washing station OR to wash dishes at our site.

9) Bowl for mixing things--pancake batter, etc.

10) Utensils--spatula, whisk, wooden spoon, can opener

11) Dishes--we have a couple sets of the blue spotted enamelware and they are so nostalgic to me! And a recipe for cast iron skillet pizza is coming your way! 

12) Disposable tablecloth--I buy a whole bunch of these and switch them out every couple of days. Picnic tables are usually pretty trashed and I also like being able to bundle it up at the end of the day and stick it in the car so I know we aren't luring any bears with any dinner splashes.

We have an Action-Packer that we keep all of our camping basics in, always packed, so it's much easier to get ready to camp. I also keep a sponge, dish soap, hand sanitizer, paper towels, matches, a citronella candle, salt, pepper, seasoned salt, and oil in that box.

13) And last but not least: roasting sticks!!!! We highly recommend the extendable telescoping variety.