Hampton Court

Today mom and I went to Hampton Court..nice place! Henry the 8th lived there, which I hadn't known. There were actors there portraying the king, Catherine Parr, etc..you'd be in a room and suddenly you'd be caught up in their drama! Like there was a group of us outside and the king and his assistant came up to us and were just talking, when his assistant suddenly whispered in his ear and he said he had to leave. Catherine came down the stairs calling for Henry, but he didn't stop for her..she told us to gather around her and she told us she was worried about the king's health and stuff. She left and her assistant told us to follow her to the Great Hall, where she told us someone connected to Catherine was beheaded, and she was worried that that connection would get Catherine in trouble..sure enough, she found a message that was a warrant for her arrest. She told us to follow her to another room, where Catherine was reading a "heretical" book, and her assistant freaked out, grabbed it out of her hands, and hid it under a stool, and told mom to sit on the stool. Catherine left to find Henry, and all of a sudden there was a pounding on the doors..the king's assistant came in and started looking for evidence that would show Catherine was a heretic. Two stools he searched didn't come up with anything, and he was about to leave when he saw the stool mom was sitting on. He told her to move, and mom was like "I'm not feeling well, I don't think I can!" and he was like "are you refusing my search?? Feeling unwell is no excuse! I'll take you to the Tower of London and have your head!" OMG lol poor mom. :P He eventually forced her to move, where the book was found, and yelled at mom some more about hiding heretical items LOL. He was going to find Catherine and arrest her, and told everyone in the room to follow him because he trusted none of us lol. In the other room was a balcony, where Catherine and Henry were talking..she was apologizing to him and saying the talk of being a heretic was untrue. The assistant appeared and Henry basically told him to get lost lol..he came back down to us very chagrined and embarrassed, and told us he made a mistake and that we could go back to our duties. The queen's assistant thanked us (especially mom) for our loyalty to the queen. Both of them came back down and said they had worked out their differences, and told us to have a good day. I thought it was really cool and fun that they do something like that! It makes the visit more "real" and special. As we left the weather got crazy and started snowing..guess we left just in time :P

We are definitely not going to be able to go to Scotland..the weather is just too crazy. Darn! I really want to go to Cambridge to see the Scott Polar Research Institute, but with the weather getting worse it might not happen. :( I'm kinda regretting the lazy days where we did nothing, but we can only do so much and need to recover. The most important thing was seeing Cherry's grave and the penguin egg, which I'm very grateful I got to see. Cambridge might have to wait till next time. We're not even sure we'll be able to fly out on Saturday. I definitely didn't expect the weather to be like this lol. Guess we'll have to see what happens..

There has been an insane about of drama with the nursing home business..Liz is freaking out and being nasty to us, grandma is freaking out, mom's sisters are freaking out, and mom is caught in the middle trying to calm everyone down. Ugh. It's exhausting! I hope it gets sorted out eventually..

( hampton court pics! )