Happy birthday Brother!

In between all the sightseeing we did while Drew was here, we also wanted to get some nice pictures of him. We had so much fun scouting out cool/pretty locations and thinking of different poses he could do while we explored some of the little towns nearby.

Bury St Edmunds Cathedral

Bury St Edmunds gardens

Drew on the cannon in front of Ely Cathedral

Ely Cathedral

Today happens to be my brother's 17th birthday!

Happy birthday Drew, love you!

Lavenham & Bury St Edmunds

When Thomas got home from his deployment he got a couple of days off work, so we decided to explore some places close to us. First on our list was Lavenham, which is an old medieval town about 45 minutes from our house. The houses are so old and many of them are crooked - it was so cool to see! We had a nice lunch at a little pub on High Street and enjoyed walking to St Peter & Paul Cathedral. 

A week or so after we went to Lavenham we were watching Harry Potter 7, and we noticed that the part  that was "Godric's Hollow" looked a lot like Lavenham!! So I looked it up online, and sure enough they filmed those scenes in Lavenham! We were pretty excited, I love me some Harry Potter ;) 

Thomas in front of the pub we had lunch at

There was a violin on the ceiling!

Crooked houses - so cool!

St Peter and Paul Cathedral

Beautiful landscaping outside of the cathedral

We also went to a Beer Festival in Bury St Edmunds with our friends Shannon and Chris. We had a great time tasting beer and whiskey - well the whiskey wasn't so great - and walking around the beautiful town. They have pretty gardens and an old abbey that we finally got to see! Usually I just go to Bury for the shopping ;)

Thomas and I in the gardens

Shannon and her new friend ;)

Old Abbey ruins

Shannon, Thomas, and Chris exploring the ruins

Beautiful rose gardens!

Bench give to Bury from the U.S. Air Force

{And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my wonderful mom - I love you!}

Chet & Chris come to England! Part 2

We had quite the adventure on one our our daytrips with Thomas' parents. We were planning on going to Warwick Castle, so I typed Warwick Castle into our GPS and we set out on our way. We ended up driving through central London, which is nowhere near where the castle was supposed to be. At this point I realized that I had set the GPS to a different Warwick Castle (apparently), and we were still 2 hours away from the actual castle. We weren't really in the mood to drive another 2 hours to find it, plus we wouldn't have made it before they closed anyways. We discovered that there was a Windsor Castle right outside of London, so we decided to find that one instead. We found it, and I'm glad we did! It was a beautiful castle, and it is an official residence of the Queen - she uses it for weekends and summers. We toured the castle and the grounds - it was very impressive and beautiful. 

Windsor Castle

Castle grounds

More castle grounds

Cute little restaurant outside the castle

Lent started last week, so we had fish and chips at the Minster Tavern in Ely on Friday. Everything was delicious, except the peas ;)

Saturday was the market day in Ely, so we headed to High Street and walked around the market. Thomas stumbled across a fabric/craft section in the back of a toy store in town - random, but exciting! We did some geocaching with Thomas' parents, it was really fun and helped us to explore parts of the town we hadn't seen before! After church on Sunday we headed to Bury St. Edmunds to see what all it had to offer. SHOPPING, that's what it had to offer :) We didn't stay too long, it was raining pretty hard and they guys weren't too into shopping, but it was nice to discover the mall and movie theatre there - now we know where to go for date nights!

We found a nice horse :)

Ely!

Beautiful! Perfect for picnicking when the weather gets nicer :)

Shopping in Bury 

We found a geocache outside the pet store!

Thomas headed back to work the second week his parents were here, and they took the train into London for three days. They walked all over the city and came back exhausted on Wednesday night :) We spent Thursday and Friday recovering and relaxing - we had some awesome movie marathons and enjoyed watching the Arizona Wildcats win their first March Madness game! :) We are sad to see Thomas' parents go, but we're so glad they came to visit and hang out with us!