Londontown

Well, I'm in London, as in, London, England! I've loaded a few random pictures below, out of the 150 or so that I've taken thus far. I'm here with a group of my students for a week of touring the sites. We went to Westminster Abbey, where (among other things) I shot this tombstone. There were many (most I could not photograph b/c they were inside the Abbey), but this one caught my eye: the plumber got to be buried in Westminster Abbey. Let's hear it for the plumbers out there!

Here's the side of the Abbey.

Here I am, standing beside one of the Royal Horse Guards. Sweet old horse.

Houses of Parliament, in the evening light, beside the Thames. Lovely.

The London Eye - we went up in that giant wheel and were in the fog at the top. A nice end to the day.

I'm very busy with the students and all the walking, so I can't promise a daily blog - sorry. I'll do what I can!

Tally-ho for now!

A day with the cute old people:

Today I went to Winston-Salem to accompany my parents to my mother's cancer appointment. For those of you who know these dear folks, here is an update on how it went:

Her surgery is scheduled for next Monday. She and Daddy will go again this Friday, for her "pre-op" -- although I always thought pre-op was RIGHT before surgery, as in, put you in your little gown, plug needles in your arm and whisk you away down the hall. Apparently not.

Her cancer was/is a sarcoma. Adam did a little reading online today, and apparently sarcoma is a pretty aggressive cancer, which would explain why this mass on her forearm grew so quickly. Sarcomas also are only about 1% of all cancers, so they are pretty rare. Sarcomas, if they spread, do not spread to the lymph nodes; they spread to the chest, by which I suppose the doctor means the lungs. So one of the first things they did today is take a chest x-ray to evaluate whether there is any indication of cancer in her chest. They also took blood for her blood work (finally!) and did an EKG.

Mother and Daddy are both very upbeat. They had a nice stay at the Hawthorne Inn, which is a hotel/conf. center owned by the hospital, so they give a generous reduction in price for patients who stay there. And they offer wonderful shuttle service from the hotel to the hospital and back. Very nice. Wake Forest Hospital is a maze of floors, breezeways, construction, oddly shaped buildings. I helped navigate us around.

The surgeon will reopen the wound and remove some of the muscle. Mother should not have much reduction in her mobility, however. I think he said, though, that if the chest x-ray indicates cancer there, plans could change very quickly.

Well, I'm off to the airport for a week-long trip to England with my students. I'll be blogging from there, hopefully. I wish I could be here for Mother's surgery, but she'll just have to soldier on without me!

Love to you all - please pray.

I KNEW there was a reason...

I had a baby a little over 18 years ago.

Philip has been invited to go to Covenant for the Scholarship Weekend! Yippee! He is being considered for 2 major scholarships, although there is no guaranty that he will be given scholarship help. But we are hopeful! Anyway, he gets a free weekend atop the mountain, which is fun in itself.

Yep. He's a pretty good kid.

Here we go...

We all headed back to school today. Sigh.

It actually wasn't too bad. I had a meeting with the students who are traveling to England, to tie up some last-minute details. Even 2 of the moms came!

I have a lot of cleaning to do before I leave. Another sigh.

Wednesday I'll accompany my parents to my mom's appointment in Winston-Salem to the cancer doctor. Pray that that goes well.

More later...

Old Salem

Adam and I went to Old Salem, NC for an overnight stay at a B&B. We do this occasionally to get away, refocus our attention on our marriage, see some lovely sites, and relax. This attempt was a success. (Our last attempt, 2 years ago, was NOT. I had a stomach bug the whole time!)
Here we are in the parlor of the B&B, The Zevely House.

Yesterday and today we took brief walks around Old Salem, seeing the beautiful architecture and seeing the shops. Here's a shot of the Moravian Cemetery. The Moravians, and their church, settled Salem long ago. They lived simple lives, and believed that all were equal in God's sight. Thus, all the graves are identical, none more showy than others. And, as in their church, the men are buried on one side, the women on the other. Families are not arranged together. The latest one to die and be buried gets the next slot in the soil.

The parlor in our B&B was cozy, and Friday evening about 5 couples sat there, discussing destinations for dinner and other B&Bs they'd stayed in. It was nice conversation.

Adam sits in our cozy room. The house is old, and carefully divided into accommodations.

Here is a better shot of our room with its wonderful fireplace. It was on the bottom level, with a private entrance.

Although our two days in Old Salem were rather cool, the weather in NC has been unseasonably warm during the Christmas break. The poor forsythia bushes will be regretting their early attempt! They usually bloom in March, I think, so that shows you how warm it's been.

Here is a beautiful walk we found this morning, next to the cemetery. Old Salem was very peaceful and devoid of tourists this weekend, although our inn was nicely full.

In the heart of Old Salem is Salem College, a girls' college with about 1000 students. The grounds of the college, and the buildings, were absolutely lovely and cozy - I wanted to go back to college days! I couldn't help think of Anna attending there, although I have no idea if it is a good school! But it sure is pretty. This is a courtyard among the residence halls.

Zevely House entrance.

It is a lovely building.

The Salem Tavern across the street was highly recommended for dinner, but unfortunately it was closed for renovations. We went to "The Filling Station" instead, about 7 minutes away, and it was delicious! We highly recommend it.

This morning we stepped into the Winkler Bakery, perhaps the best known place in Old Salem for their fabulous thin ginger cookies. They actually come in many flavors. And the bakery makes breads and sweet breads. Adam had a good long talk with the baker.

Here are some of their delicious loaves. The rosemary bread is luscious!

Recipe for Adam's turtles

Ellen - here's how Adam does his turtles. He loosely uses a recipe from a chocolate cookbook he bought me years ago.

Caramel Mixture:
5 2/3 cups heavy cream
3 3/4 cups light corn syrup
7 1/2 Tbs. salted butter
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
2 1/2 Tbs. vanilla extract

(The above proportions give a smooth non-sticky caramel, easy to handle. Adam increased the fat content from the original for this purpose, and increased the amount of brown sugar to give a darker caramel color.)
In a heavy saucepan, stir cream, syrup, butter, sugars and salt. Cook over med. heat, stirring until sugars dissolve and butter is melted, about 3 minutes. Bring to boil and cook, stirring frequently, until mixture reaches about 245 degrees, or close to hard-ball stage. Adam uses the ice-water test at the final stages, dropping a bit in a small bowl of ice water and feeling the consistency. It takes about an hour to cook this caramel, so don't be in a hurry!

Once cooked, pour unsalted peanuts onto a large cookie sheet, pour caramel sauce over peanuts, and work into the peanuts. When it's cool enough, work the caramels into small discs. It will be hot to your hands. Freeze them on cookie sheets until they are frozen hard. Freezing them allows you to use pure chocolate (no paraffin) , and you won't have to temper your chocolate. This makes for delicious turtles.

Chocolate Dip:

1 lb. milk chocolate to 1 lb. semi-sweet chocolate- this is the proportion.
Melt in double-boiler. If you can smell the chocolate, it's too hot and you're scorching your chocolate. He uses 4 1/2 lbs. of chocolate total, to the above recipe amount of caramel.

Dip frozen caramel discs into chocolate. Place on cookie sheets (on parchment paper is best) and freeze again. This sets the chocolate. After they are frozen well, place them in plastic food bags and keep in freezer. They are great just eaten straight from the freezer, but you can put them into tins and give away too.

The above recipe will yield about 120 caramels, depending on the size of your discs.

Rearranging

That's what I've been doing. I confess, and many other women will understand this, that when I get a penchant to rearrange a dab of furniture, it blossoms. Before you know it, all males in the house are toting chairs and tables around.

I brought my television cabinet upstairs. It's been abused in the den downstairs for long enough - that's the children's domain. I sent the old victrola case down there, and it has plenty of room in it for the DVDs, etc. I finally put away the pictures I never hung up when we moved in; they'd been leaning against the dining room wall all these months.

Adam took down the Christmas lights today too. His comfy black chair came back upstairs and life can resume its normal mode.

Julia has taken up hand-sewing. Grandmother gave her a cute little sewing basket, and today I bought her all the little necessities at WalMart: scissors, thread, needles, pins, tape measure, pin cushion. She is thrilled.