Farewell White House!!
Our many wonderful companions of the last month gave us a spectacular farewell party on Sayturday night that we shall not soon forget which included, among other things a Tarot Reading, a "Disco Dome," "Strobe," and "Stampede." Yes, it was an interesting night. Possibly the best at White House so far. If any of our friends are reading this from college, you should know that no matter how wild your school/dorm/frats/sororities/parties are, they would pale in comparison to the way my Aunt Emma throws a party. And I am not afraid to prove that, with footage taken on the night of Oct. 9, 2010.

Anyway though, our departure date proved much less festive and was, in fact, very solemn. We helped organized a BDAY party for Anya, which involved dozens of kids running around screaming (typical, I believe, of 5 year old parties). Then we visited the gravesite of my grandparents, which is a quiet graveyard (duh, all graveyards are quiet, I mean it is on a quiet hillside in a tiny village overlooking a beautiful chapel). Their headstone is elegant dark marble with a silver inscription, and it was a bright and cold day when we stood on the hillside and paid respects not only to my grandparents, but my great grandparents.Then we returned to the house and said some excruciating farewells to our various companions. We had imagined that leaving California would be our only difficult farewells, but in fact farewells seem to be difficult whenever you make good friends, which we certainly did on this leg of the journey.

Then we retraced our steps directly back to the train station, train back to Northampton, and back to Pooty's house. We went for a drive through the unbelievably lovely, quintissentially English (if you don't know what they wierd q-word means, shame on you, it sounds awesome in a British accent) countryside, which I will not describe further because I feel like too much of this blog is spent describing how beautiful England is.
Suffice to say, it just is.

The feast served by Pooty surpassed almost any other we have received thus far. I should note here that some of our readers have requested a decrease in descriptions of food. I would like to remind the reader (Emma Ritcey), that we don't take requests, we never said reading this blog would be easy, and we don't particularly care if you are hungry. Just kidding, we do care, go get a snack from a vending machine. [Pause from writing while I eat a huge bite of creme brulee]...
Anyway, Pooty's feast included cauliflower in cheese sauce, homegrown squash in homegrown tomato sauce, potatoes, peaches cooked in cinnamon, cabbage salad, a homegrown ham, and to finish, a Sticky Toffee Pudding. Needless to say, this meal was followed very quickly by total cerebral and physical shutdown and collapse into bed.