The tooth hangs by a thread, flicking back and forth almost as easily and mindlessly as breathing in and out. If you ask him why he doesn’t just pull it out, the answer is quick and firm: “NO. I DON’T WANT TO.” H is on the verge of losing his second tooth of the trip....

Boarding Chunnel, bound for France — so cool! W just said: “Let’s play soccer ”...

      I decided to solo pilot a wooden rowboat for the first time this week in the middle of a seasonal gale on Lake Windermere. As if there weren’t enough rainbursts, shallow water buoys, and expensive watercraft to look out for, I spiced up the maiden voyage by propping up my...

Shploock. Shlup.  I cringe just a little as the mud closes over the top of my shoe.  It is a slightly delicious, and slightly disgusting, noise as I pull my foot out for my next step.  I try not to guesstimate the varieties of bacteria and feces mixed in there, so I look up and around. The...

Two days ago we went to a Manchester United game. It was so fun! They played a team called Wigan Athletic. I had never heard of wigan athletic before and by the end of the game I knew why: Manchester United Beat them 4-0.Nobody scored in the first half but in the second half Manchester scored...

This afternoon I was poking at one of my molars and it popped right out! It wasn’t even loose!!!  There was a lot of blood!!  10x as more as on the napkin!!! This tooth makes three this trip!! One in Iceland, and one in Chilton, England! I got 100 Krona in Iceland, a pound here and...

The highlight of this week for me has been time spent on just a fraction of the hundreds of miles of public footpaths that stripe the Lake District.  Yellow arrows on wooden posts declare public right-of-way, down roads, along fences, across fields, through pastures, up and down fells and...

W and H recently paraded around our apartment dressed as mom and dad — wearing our footwear, speaking our expressions, and sporting accurate hairstyles. They even asked everyone to leave the room so they could have a private conversation. It’s true that we’ve chosen to...

Today we took down a barbed wire fence!  We used this crazy tool called a “wee-beastie”  to cut, bend, hammer the wire and to pry out the gigantic staples that fastened the fence to the fence poles (E posted about the “wee-beastie” HERE).  When we got the  barbed...

Today we volunteered for a group called Friends of the Lake District. We took down a barbed wire fence. We took it down because it had fallen down and the ponies and cows could have gotten tangled up in the barbed wire. The ponies were very curious and they came up to us and they let us pet...

t Today we helped out with the Friends of the Lake District.  We took down an old fence so the cows and horses wouldn’t get tangled up in the barbed wire.  I am using the “wee beastie” tool  in this picture, taking out a staple that holds the wire to the pole.  It was...

This picture is only one third posed … … and it shows how YESTERDAY was a particularly trying day for World School. S pulled teeth through math and science. I struggled through art of language. An example: Since we’re in the Lake District, we’re discussing POETRY in...

You may find this somewhat distasteful … but this is the spot where, deep in the fells and dales of England’s Lake District, I was able to text with my wife who was an hour’s walk away. Very...

I’ve spoken with some friends about THE NOISE that has been part of this journey — bits of things that I’m shedding (and noticing!) as we (try to) deepen our focus on the truest and most honest forms of faith, family, and our journey. Our arrival in the Lake District has...

S and I read somewhere (a blog?) that, despite the generous year we’ve been given, our ’round-the-world tracks will really amount to A THIN BLACK LINE around our massive globe. It’s a phrase we’ve used repeatedly when discussing our year away. I’m here to tell...

We’ve had some requests to update our WHERE WE ARE page … so we’ve done it. Reach it through the above link (below the page logo) … or click here.

  We’ve been staying in a commuter community called Chilton. S came across a posted flyer calling one and all to join Chilton’s bell ringers for a Tuesday night workshop. These aren’t hand bells, mind you — they are the REAL DEAL, church bells, high up in a...

(S and the boys are in a clump in the bottom left part of this picture.) One lesson from today’s free audio tour around Stonehenge: “Take away all the scholarship and archeology and myth and legend and debate over Stonehenge, and you still have a profound site.” So...

This week, we walked in the footsteps of C.S. Lewis — the very place he’d been at Oxford’s Magdalen College before writing these words: You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the...

S chooses to wander through the rose garden. W, H, and E choose to lay down on the “awesome grass.” H is standing on top of a burial mound that’s thousands of years old and yells out over the other visitors at the site: “I am standing on the dead people!” S has...