ISE Thanksgiving

Today we gathered together with our fellow ISEs to celebrate our wonderful American holiday of Thanksgiving. We have lots to be thankful for this year and to be able to gather with the group made it feel a lot more like home. We came together at the village hall in small village outside of Peterborough that had plenty of space for the kids to play outside. We had all the traditional goodies and turkey...it was like being at a family dinner. The day was bittersweet as we were glad to be with with our ISE family, but we were also mourning the loss of Kevin's Grandma Alma Rasmussen who passed just the day before. We were trying to enjoy meeting new faces byt were longing to be with our family at that time. Grandma Ras was an amazing woman and we were lucky to have the opportunity to see her this past summer before we left. We knew we would potentially have things like this happen while being over here, but until you have to face it straight on and you can't image how helpless you feel. On the brighter side, she is now all around us and watching over us here. I told Kevin that she's now with Grandpa Ras and my Grandpa Dick and they are having a grand ole time.

To reflect a bit on what I'm thankful for this year...

1) To be blessed with a beautiful and healthy little girl who has truly changed Kevin's and my life is such a positive way
2) To have a family who loves us so much and supports us with all the crazy adventures we take on (AKA...moving to England)
3) Skype - this has been a life saving tool - the miracle of getting to "see" our family and them to see us makes us feel that there isn't a huge ocean between us
4) My husband - who takes on the challenge of working in a foreign place and having the strength and ambition to bring us here to the UK to live and experience a whole new world. Especially that he has allowed me to "retire" early in order to care for our daughter
5) TalkTalk international calling - I can pick up the phone anytime and call anyone back in the States and talk to those of you who actually pick up the phone after being scared off by the "restricted incoming call" on your caller ID.
6) Wonderful people (English, American, Malaysian, and more) who have accepted us into this country and have become wonderful friends and a great support

A British Thanksgiving Day

The interesting thing about a British Thanksgiving Day is that there is no such thing and here in lies the interesting part about trying to celebrate an American holiday in a foreign country. Since there is no hype up for the big day, it came up on us quickly and it almost ended up being an ordinary day in the UK..."oh Thanksgiving is on Thursday, I almost forgot." As we all know, one of the biggest things about Thanksgiving is the traditional meal and I worked very hard to collect the recipes of all the traditional goodies - pumpkin pie with my great grandma Vera's pie crust recipe, Kevin's grandma Ras's stuffing recipe, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes/gravy, homemade rolls, Ocean Spray Cranberry's in a jar, and a large British "chicken." Kevin took the day off, yes, he actually had to use a vacation day because we are to follow our host country's vacation schedule. I made some homemade cinnamon rolls the night before so we started out the day with some yummie sweets. To get our minds off being away from family and as we patiently waited to call family back home, we went for a walk out in the country on a beautiful cool,wet fall day. Around 11:30 AM our time (5:30 AM Central) we called up my mom and dad...got my mom to shoot right out of bed and she about scared Addison with the wild bed head hair. A few hours later we visited with Kevin's folks and I kept quizzing Sally about how to perfect the stuffing recipe - it was a crockpot recipe and I don't have one so it posed some tweaking. Most of the afternoon I spent prepping and preparing our evening meal...the pumpkin pie ended up being a team effort. I was missing some ingredients so my wonderful neighbor, Min, ran to the store for me, then Kevin had to help me wrap the edges with foil and put it in our oven, and of course everyone had a piece to eat. Also since there is no Cool Whip in the blessed country I had to make my own sweetened whipping cream (actually it tastes a lot better than Cool Whip). Kevin told me it really started to feel like Thanksgiving once he could smell the stuffing cooking...me too. We got a special treat when we decided to Skype my mom and dad again in the afternoon, my Auntie Julie and Uncle Thom stopped and we got to see them as well. They had a hoot seeing Addison. Our friends/neighbors Danny, Min, Yi Xuen, and Yi Hong came over for dinner. Since they are from Singapore, this was their first Thanksgiving and what a treat it was having them share a great American tradition. Our other British neighbors also brought us a bottle of wine since they knew we were celebrating the day. After dinner, Min and I ran off to our neighbors house for a Virgin Vie home party, Danny brought the kids home to bed and Kevin turned on Sky Sports and watched the NFL games that happened to be broadcasting. It was a great day, but bittersweet to be away from our extended family, but it was a great opportunity to start some new traditions with our "new family" over here.

Girls Weekend in London

This weekend I headed down to London with a great group of gals for a couple of days of shopping, shows, and loads of fun. This was the first time I was to be away from both Kevin and Addison overnight and I was pretty nervous so it was hard to sleep the night before, but I got up bright an early to catch the 7:48AM train down to London. It is pretty nice that it's only an hour train ride down to London right from Peterborough. After the other gals made it to King's Cross Station, we all made our way to the hotel which was about a 1/2 mile hike from the train station. We then headed to the Covent Garden market, which was really cool. It was an open air market with lots of different vendors and I did happen to find some unique Christmas gifts and now looking back I should have bought more. We navigated ourselves by accident to the TGIFridays for lunch where it took almost 2 1/5 hours for us to eat a late lunch...gotta love that English service. Saturday night we went to see "Hairspray" at the Shaftsbury Theater and it was so amazing. I haven't seen the movie, but I love the story and seeing it live and feeling the excitement that the cast conveyed was so cool. Afterwards we waited outside the side stage door to see the actors come out. We headed back to the hotel where we stayed up like a bunch of grade school girls and visited until 2:30AM...it was so fun. On Sunday we went to the Country Living Christmas Show at the Business Center. We split up for 2 hours to circle the show on our own and it definitely took that long navigate through all the people. There were lots of unique gift ideas and I happen to pick up some really fun things for Addison. Amazingly I happen to run into my neighbors Simon and Sarah at the show...who would of thunk...what a small world. We ended up wandering back to our hotel in the misty rain since it was pretty hard to find a cab at that hour. Sadly our weekend was coming to an end, but we did get to enjoy the train ride home together and we chatted the whole way. I think this weekend was a real turning point for me - I got a little time to focus on me and to get to know some very special gals that I think will make living over here great!

Is the UK more child friendly?

I've had visits with British moms who feel that the US is much more family friendly than the UK. I have to say that I agree that hotels and restaraunts for "holidays" or vacations are pretty nice in the US, but I'm not sure that much else can beat some of the things they have in the UK. Now I haven't had much experience with the US and dealing with kid friendliness since we left when Addie was only 5 months old, but over here there are some amazing things that they have that I've never seen in the States. Here are a few things we have available:

1) Parent/child parking - they have this at almost every major type of store. They are designated parking spots with extra room (3-4 feet) on either side of the space to that you can easily pull a child out of the car and put them in a push chair (stroller). Regular parking spots allow you just enough room for someone to crack their door open about 8 inches and squeeze out of your car and that's if you have a small car. The coolest part is that these spots are often right up next to the store on the other side of the handicap parking and there are usually a ton of spots. Today we parked front and center at a very packed new store called B&Q which is just like a Home Depot but cooler. It seemed so unfair that we got to park so close, but we'll take advantage of any thing that makes life easier here.

2) Family changing rooms - everywhere you can actually find bathrooms they have a men's, women's and family changing room. It's not just a pull down changing table but loaded with necessities, most are impecably clean, and they have been wonderful.

3) Free baby food offered at grocery store cafes. The ASDA supermarket store (the British Wal-Mart) gives out free jars of baby food when mums get something to eat or drink.

4) Mother feeding rooms - I have seen at IKEA and at a store called Mothercare that they have designated rooms for breastfeeding mothers....wow. It's challenging enough to keep yourself discrete feeding your child when out and about, but it's amazing to walk in a store that cares enough about the little things. Back to IKEA...the store in Milton Keynes is the most family friendly place I have ever seen. They have an entire play room loaded with games, toys, and movies for kids to play while parents go shopping in the store. They offer free baby food, designated family eating tables, and more.

5) Maternity leave here is for months...not weeks. Some of the moms here about fell over when I told them I got to take 7 weeks for my maternity leave. They thought the few months they get off pretty stringent compared to other places in Europe that offer women up to a year or more off with pay and they get their jobs when they want to come back.

6) Baby TV - we have two television channels that are devoted completely to programs for baby's. Not that I want Addie to be a couch potato, but they have some great little programs with nursery rhymes, bright colors, and learning about shapes, numbers, and letters.

You be the judge, but even with weird baby food and other quarky things we've run into I have found the UK a pretty great place to be raising our little girl.

What's a Refill?

This afternoon we decided to do lunch at McDonald's. We have a McDonald's only a mile down the road at the first major round about south of Glinton. We've done the drive thru a few times and that took some getting used to because you obviously drive up to the other side. Over here you actually talk to a person to give them your order which is quite lovely. The hard thing is to realize when you are ordering your 4.50GBP quarter pounder with cheese that it's actually costing us $9. I've taken quite a liking to the Chicken Selects and they don't have your typical Ranch, Honey Mustard, and BBQ sauces, no they have Smokey BBQ, Sweet Chili, and Brown Sauce. Well today Kevin and I split a Chicken Selects meal and we downed the Coke we had been sharing and we were still pretty parched when we finished off so I attempted to get a refill. Now I say attempted because typically in restaraunts in the UK you don't get free refills on really anything. I walked up with my empty cup and asked the chap behind the counter how much it would cost to get a refill on my Coke. You thought I started speaking a foreign language to him with the look I got. I then went on to explain that I wanted to get more Coke in my cup and asked how much would it cost. He asked if I had Coke left in the cup, I said no, and he asked "What is it that you want?"...."I want you to refill my cup with Coke and I will pay for it." He proceeded to ask if I wanted a large and if I wanted a new cup. We came to a consensus that I would just buy a brand new cup of Coke. I filled Kevin in with my conversation as we walked out of the store and we just marveled at the idea that guy didn't understand what a refill was.

Bonfire Night

I know in the States we have some unique holidays...4th of July, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, etc., but tonight we took part in a British holiday celebrated for hundreds of years called Bonfire Night. To an outsider looking in, you probably think it's a cool sounding fall holiday to have bonfires out in your garden (yard), shoot off some fireworks, and get together with friends, and I bet you didn't know that Bonfire Night is actually more popular in the UK than Halloween is. Well let me tell you a little bit of history about Bonfire Night which is actually its on November 5th, but is celebrated through out the whole weekend before.

Hundreds of years ago there was a plot to kill King James I by a conspirator, Guy Fawkes, who loaded up the cellar below the House of Lords in Parliment with barrels of gun powder. An insider leaked out the secret to a friend and the king found out about it, so they found Guy and they took him to the Tower of London and tortured him horribly - hung him until he was almost dead, put him on the racks and stretched him out, then quartered him and hung his parts all around London to warn others against attempting plots to assasinate the king. Today they celebrate the fact that the king was saved by burning huge bonfires with effigies (stuffed fake bodies) of Guy Fawkes as a reminder of how he was tortured and shoot off fireworks to remember the failed blowing up of the king. It's quite an interesting story for parents to explain to their children. "Why mummy are they throwing a man on the fire?" Their response, "Because he was very, very naughty."

Well on Saturday nighat around 5:30PM we walked to the neighboring village in the dark carrying our torches (flashlights) to a huge bonfire and then fireworks at 6:30 (that's a lot earlier in the evening to watch fireworks than in the summer in the States). We ran into quite a few people we knew from our own village, so it was to see familiar faces in a nice gathering of a few hundred people. It is truly amazing on how we feel like a part of our community when we've only been here for three months.