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.

Bugs, bugs, bugs

Well we've discovered several types of bugs while here in the UK. First this summer there were these things that looked like giant mosquitos. They seemed to fly all over the place and I often wondered if we were getting bit throughout the night. They don't believe in screens on windows so there's now way of keeping the icky things out and you need to have the windows open because there is no air conditioning. Secondly, the spiders here are bigger than Volkswagons (well maybe not that big), but they are huge and hairly looking. I've had a few run ins while in my laundry room and a few times in my bathroom and I haven't screemed like that since I was a little girl. Another day I was cleaning up in our "extra" room and as I moved over Kevin's ties a huge bee came swarming at me...where the heck did that come from. I grabbed the first thing handy and squarshed it and let it out the window. Well the most bugs Addie and I have been dealing with are so small you can't see them. Today we went to the GP because we had noticed Addison had been quite irritable with a horrible cough and runny nose for a couple weeks. Well it seems that our little one had bronchitis...the cold she had a few weeks ago moved into her lungs. What an amazing difference it made the day after she started taking her medicine. She was happy and crawling around all over the place. I felt horrible that it took me so long to get her into the doctor, but there is that overlying fear that they wouldn't do anything for her. Well about too days later a microscopic bug got in me and knocked me off my feet. After waking up with Addie in the middle of the I felt like my spine had horrible shooting pains in it and I was cold but with no fever. The next day we ran some errands up town and I couldn't hardly get myself home because I was so feverish. I don't care much for driving through lots of round abouts when I'm feeling good, and when you are sick it's about 100 worse because the last thing you want to do is think and you have to be on your A game when driving around those things. Well I ended up with 101.5 F temperature and completely helpless. They had an opening at the doctor that night and he told me I likely had an infection that caused the high fever but he was afraid I was developing bronchitis as well so I was put on an antibiotic. Needless to say, Kevin played "mom" that night and I think he quite enjoyed it. Addie had a hard time understanding why he kept her away from me. I went to bed early that night and woke up in a pool of wet when my fever finallly broke in the middle of the night. Later that next night I felt much better...it was so weird how quickly it came and went. I felt hopeless though because I couldn't do anything. You could say I am about sick of bugs!!!

A Week in the Canary Islands

This week we set out on our first big "holiday" trip to the Spanish Canary Islands off the western coast of Morocco, Africa. Sounds exotic but it's the equivalent of some in the US going to the Caribbean. Things started out pretty interesting for us about 4 hours before we were going to leave - Kevin discovered in the small print that Addison didn't have any baggage allowance. Funny thing was that the "stuff" we needed for her ended up in one suitcase and both of our carryons, so Kevin and I had to skrimp down our stuff into one case because we had pretty strick baggage allowance rules. We took a 4 hour flight our of the London-Stanstead Airport to the tiny volcanic island of Lanzarote. Stepping off the plane we felt like we had stepped onto the moon or a giant rock pile. There are over 300 volcanoes on the island and several of them are still active. We hopped on the coach to our hotel and the weird thing was that they drive on the right side of the road there and we were freaked out since we'd been driving on the left side for such a time. Even though they drive on the right side, all the speed limit signs are in km/hour and everything is in written in Spanish so those two years of high school Spanish had to be recalled in a hurry. We stayed at the Playa Flamingo resort which is set up as villa type apartments. The weather was amazing. It was sunny and hot...about 34 C each day...I think that's in the mid-90's F. We loaded up on SPF 30 and put 50 SPF on Addie and kept her in the shade as much as possible. The first day we went to the beach and floated in the cold Atlantic Ocean. After Addie ate most of the sand and tried eating a few volcanic rock pieces we felt that was too stressful so we stayed up around the pool for the rest of the week. We sat everyday and soaked up the sun. We took Addie for long walks twice a day to get her to fall asleep for her naps. We ordered take-away Hawaiian pizza everyday from the Beach Club for lunch. Kevin played very competitive water polo matches each day and later on in the week I ventured to do the water aerobics sessions in the pool. We attemtpted to do the trivia but everything was British trivia since the resort was owned by Thomson a British company. A nice thing was that the Canary Islands utilize the Euro for currency so our dollar went a bit farther. The biggest treat was that they had Oreo cookies at the supermarkets onsite and we ate them like they were going out of style because you can't find them in the UK. The staff was amazing at the resort and it was very family friendly. Addison did pretty well. We all had to sleep in the same room so the two weeks of sleeping routines all went out the window when she would wake up in the night. The only downfall of the accomodations was that there was no air conditioning, but we did have a ceiling fan and an oscilating fan. The Canary Islands' infastructure was built by tax contributions from the EU so all the roads and such were almost brand new, but because of the strain on natural resources they don't utilize A/C to conserve electricity. Since we were trying to keep Addie's bedtime to around 7:30 we had to keep ourselves entertained. We did so by watching Sky News and EuroSport TV because they happened to be the only English speaking channels and by playing cards. It was a great vacation for all of us to be together, but we learned that 7 nights is a long time for a vacation and we were excited to finally get home and sleep in our own bed.

First Tooth

It finally happened...Addison's first tooth broke through...it's about time. We've been waiting for almost a month for something to happen to our cranky little princess. I rubbed my finger around on her gums and I could feel her bottom right tooth was poking through.

Our Baby's Eight Months Old

Wow...eight months has gone by so fast! Our little baby is growing up and she is the most beautiful thing in the world to her daddy and me. Having a child has certainly changed our outlook on life so much. Movies get me teary eyed when some sentimental scene happens with a parent and child. Kevin looks forward to getting home from work to give Addie her bath and play with her before she zonks out for the night. Tough thing is is she starts to get fussier about that time of night when he gets home so he doesn't get to enjoy her happiest times of the day like I do. She is starting to give hugs and she even gives wet kisses. One little amazing thing she does is now if you put your hands out in front of her, she will actually grab your hands and brings them together to clap like she's teaching you how to clap. She's so adorable. She crawling everywhere and will pull herself up on anything she can - we don't have the house "Addie-proofed" yet. She likes going after the recycling bin so I told her a story about a little girl who got her finger cut off by reaching in to a bin with empty soda cans in it. My attempt to teach her a valuable lesson fell on deaf ears and she still goes after the bin. Kevin certainly likes hearing the story which of course is completely made up, but I thought it was a better approach then nipping "NO" at her all the time.

First Encounter with British Health Care

Today Addison had her first visit with a "Health Visitor." Over here your child's development and growth up through kindergarten age is monitored by health visitors which are usually nurses. You only go to the doctor (General Practitioner - GP) when you are sick. For babies, they usually come out to your home for the initial visit, but since Addie was more than a few days old we had to make our made way up the big clinic in Market Deeping (that's the nearby village with the big medical practice is). Paddi was very nice and she had worked in the States for 15 years, so she was very familiar with how I was used to things in America. We sat in a room that they do the weekly "check up" clinics in to visit about immuninizations and general develop things to know about Addie. It was pretty cold in the room so when she asked me to get Addie down to her birthday suit to weigh and measure her I felt pretty bad for my baby. At Dr. Carlson's office they used to heat up the room and lay down heated blankets when Addie would come in. She fussed but she's tough. She weighed 9.4 kg and was 68.5 cm long (that's 20 lbs and 27 inches long) so she's in the 91st percentile in weigh still and 50% in height. She's starting to slow down in the growth spurt. There were a few things that I was advised to start trying with Addie now that she was 8 months old. In terms of food, we could start mashing up food from our plates at dinner for her to eat. Hard thing is that she's hungry at 5PM and Kevin gets held up at work until at least 6:30 each night. Paddi recommended that I start feeding her whole milk in her cereal in the morning, "Greek" style yogurt and mixing fruit with it (not the sugar loaded kid stuff), and try to get her eating a Wheatabix biscuit for breakfast. (Wheatbix is like a Shredded Wheat biscuit type food). Well I still had Addie on Stage 1 foods which means everything is finely pureed and any kind of texture usually freaked her out. She was doing just fine but I didn't want her getting behind on food I guess so being the over anxious and bought it all that afternoon. Needless to stay she revolted on me and decided she didn't want to eat anything for the next few days. Duh, Corrina - baby steps on changing our routine! The nice thing about it all was that she got so mad about the solid foods that when I gave her the bottle she grabbed hold of it and fed herself for the first time. She even did it one handed (I think she gets that bit from her dad)...no double gripping for this little girl! Overall the first health visit was okay, but for my first child it's probably good that I don't know any better about the way things are suggested in the US because it seems like some things could be quite different here.

Daddy/Addie Day and First British Baby-Sitter

Today was pretty momentous for me because I left Addison twice in one day and was away from her for the longest amount of time since our house hunting trip. I was asked back on our house hunting trip to attend the local production of "High School Musical" and I of course agreed, but I didn't realize it was going to be on a Saturday afternoon and that it wasn't going to be appropriate for me to bring her with me. So it was an Addie and Daddy afternoon while Mommy went off to the show. I did have a great time but I thought about my two kiddos the whole time and had to text message home to see how things were going. Later that evening Kevin and I had plans to attend a get-together at a friends house. My friend had offered that I could bring Addison and have her babysitter watch her, but since we had Addie on this new sleeping regiment we wanted her to be in her own bed. So we had the daunting/scary task of finding a babysitter for the evening. We asked around to some other ISE's and we got Abbey's name. She lives only 5 minutes away in a neighboring village and she was super sweet on the phone but we were about to leave our baby with a complete stranger....we were so nervous, but all went well. We let Addison met Abbey but then I put her to bed before we took off because she had been going through some serious "mommy withdrawl". We had a lovely time at the party and surprisingly we didn't call home...mostly because we didn't want the home phone to wake up Addison. Abbey reported that Addie did end up waking up about an hour or so after we left so she brought her down to play and then she went back to sleep. The really interesting thing about hiring a babysitter is that the going rate for their services is 5 pounds/hour....so if you are gone for four hours that's 20 pounds and that translates to $40 for 4 hours of someone sitting at your house while your daughter sleeps upstairs. Crazy you say...but well worth it!

Hardest Night as a Parent so Far

Well after serveral weeks of giving Addison the benefit of the doubt that she was probably teething and that was what was keeping her up at night we decided to set down a new regime in the Dea household. I had looked up some things on the internet about sleeping problems with 8 month olds and I finally felt that we needed to do something different. Either we could let Addie keep us up every 1 1/2 hours each night or we could start taking back our evenings. It seemed so harsh but we lowered the matress and we put Addison in bed at 7PM and let her scream it out. It was the most heart wrenching thing ever to hear your child scream, and to top it all off it was the first time I had ever heard her call out "Ma-ma". After about 20 minutes she finally fell asleep. When I went to check on her and she had her face buried down in the sheets and her butt sticking up in the air. Needless to say she woke up at midnight and screamed again. It took about four nights before she would sleep through the night and wake up around 6:30. Addison and I (and Kevin) hadn't slept that long through the night in ages and it felt wonderful (for all of us).

Weekend In London

This weekend we decided to take our first trip to London as British residents. Kevin and I had spent two hectic days there a year ago and saw a lot of sites but our goal was to "take it easy" since we had Addie this time. We decided to back pack it and take the train from Peterborough to King's Cross Station in London. It only took 1 hour and 20 minutes and was very relaxing not having to drive. Addie had a great time on the train and even took a short nap. We brought Addison to Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, Big Ben at Parliament and Westminster Abbey. We made our way up to Nottinghill in search of Portabello Road, but got sidetracked when I wanted to find Kensington Palace (former home of Diana). Well after an hour of walking around we couldn't find it (it really pays to have a good map of London to find things). Kevin had about enough walking and said "I need a pint." We turned around and went into a Tex Mex place. It was a good rest. We finally found Portabello Road and it was chaotic...so many people, but some really cool stuff. The street was loaded with vendors selling antiques to brand new Wallace and Grommit memorabilia. We made our way to the Holiday Inn in Camden Town which we didn't realize must be the tatoo and piercing capital of the UK. When we went to get dinner at 5:50PM the restarants would not allow children inside after 6PM because they were all considered bars, but we could sit outside. We finally ended up eating at some sushi restaraunt, which was really good, but we didn't eat sushi though. The area was a bit rough for a young couple with an 8 month old and only after we made our way through the market area to end up surrounded by "goth" looking people and Asian food vendors yelling to us that all their food was on sale for 2 GBP a plate. The next day we walked about 2 miles to Regent Park and to the London Zoo. Addie loved the zoo and all the animals. I think her favorite was the gorillas because they would come right up to the glass and make faces at the children. The train ride home was so much nicer than driving, but the train was pretty busy. When we go to the station the exit gates were open which we thought was weird. The car park was one of those pay based on how long you stayed there. While other people stood at the machines paying their 5 pounds a day for weekend parking we passed by and snuck out the gate....I hope that wasn't illegal, but why would they keep the gates wide open going in and out with no one around. Lucky us, we saved 10 pounds (that's $20).

A Quest to Find Conservatory Furniture and the Cyclone/Hawkeye Game

Well to start things off you have to realize that yes in the UK lots of people have conservatories...just like in the game Clue, but our is more like a 4 seasons room. Also when it comes to British vocabulary...you pronouce conservatory all jumbled up like "con-serv-a-tree"...sounds kind of like conserving a tree. Anyway I started with the yellow pages, which is almost impossible to find anything in because they call everything something different. So being the techno junkie I am I went to the internet to look for places that sold such furniture and I found two that were close by. My first place was called "Wicker World"...to me it sounded like that RV place in Pontiac, IL - "RV World". It took me a while to find the place because it was out in the middle of no where and my Sat Nav put it next to a pig farm, but I actually ended up calling the place and found it down the road. From the looks of the place I didn't know what to expect, but they had some really nice and modern looking pieces and the sales chap was very nice and helped me load up Addie's push chair (stroller) in the car. I checked out a second place that was hidden back in a scary looking building. What they had really reminded me of one of the "Golden Girls" sitcom episodes. I told the salesman that looking at wicker furniture reminded me of Florida and he asked me "Why?" in a curious manner. I said it reminded me of old retired people who live in Florida that have those tropical prints on the super light and shiny cane type furniture. I don't think he really understood since most Brits seem to think of Florida as sandy beaches and Disney World. Kevin went back to Wicker World with me on Saturday and we picked out a pretty nice set which should be in around 3-6 weeks. When we got home from shopping we fixed up some hot dogs and taco dip and sat around the computer to listen to our favorite Iowa State Cyclones beat the tar out of the Iowa Hawkeyes. It was great to listen to some familiar sounds of home and listening to the commericals was even weirder...an American accent instead of British...it was great.

Guess Who Got Married???

We were in for the biggest suprise when our friends Brad and Jaye came for the weekend. As we strolled to the pub Thursday evening they filled us in on the biggest secret of all...they were planning to get married in Peterborough on Saturday night and we were asked to be a part of it. This was bigger than Bush's "shock and awe" and we were so honored. So on Friday we went to Warwick Castle (one of the greatest castle's in all of England - a must go for everyone) to get some English sites in. We got to watch and participate in the shooting of the largest working trebuchet in the world...yes we walked around a big hamster wheel type thing to wind up a rope to pull over 6 tons up in the air 5 meters to then hurl a 15kg ball that was lit on fire. It was sweet. Addison slept through the whole thing but we got it all on video so we'll show it to her later.
On Saturday we helped Brad and Jaye get things ready for the wedding and of course Addison and I needed new outfits for the occasion so we ran into M&S and I got a new black dress and Addie got a new pink sweater to wear over the same dress she wore in Auntie Crystal's wedding. The ceremony was beautiful and it was so wonderful to see they two great people finally get "hitched". They told us they had been planning things ever since they knew we were moving over here. It was first of all great to have visitors so soon but to be a part of their wedding was spectacular. After the ceremony we went to the Sessions House for a few pints and then off to Tuscanini's...a fabulous Italian restaraunt in Eye. Then on Sunday we dropped them off at Luton Airport so they could head out on their honeymoon in Amsterdam and France.

Did She Just Crawl???

We're in trouble now, Addison is mobile. As we were hanging up some shelfs in the living room tonight, Kevin shouted to me to look as we watched her move forward about 3 crawls and then flat on her tummy. "She's crawling, she's crawling" Kevin was extatic...I said "We're in trouble now." She really enjoys moving around and had been pretty stable on her arms and moving backwards lately but never moved forward until tonight.Kevin also likes to get her to stand up and here he's got her to hold on to the couch and stand for a while on her own. I guess I would prefer her to climb up on the couch versus her always heading towards the fireplace...I can tell that's going to be our toughest challenge. We are so proud of her though. We couldn't wait to get her to replicate her efforts in front of the grandparents on Skype the next day.

Our Sea Shipment Made It - Feels Like Christmas

Our sea shipment showed up today and it was wonderful seeing our own furniture after it was packed up almost 5 weeks ago. It only took them three hours to unload all of our belongings into our house. We quickly found out that there was no way we were going to be able to use everything we brought so as soon as we unpacked we repacked several boxes. As you can see Addison wanted to help out when she could, but unwrapping boxes. She worked so hard though that she zonked out for a nap after they brought in our living room furniture. The biggest issue for me was unpacking my kitchen things because my kitchen here is about 1/3 the size of the one I had before. I got through being frustrated after realizing that I really didn't need to have all of the things I brought, I could do without I guess. Alot of my "fun" stuff got put back into boxes and will have to wait 3-5 years to either be used again or sold at a sale. A big life lesson I have learned over the past month is that we can get by on much less than we think we need, although some of the little extras are nice we survived for 5 months without it. I slept like a baby that night on my very own bed with my new bedroom furniture. Addison didn't do so well back in her own bed in her own room. Poor thing has forgotten how to be on her own...she used to sleep so well through the night and now she's all mixed up. Her room is so much smaller than before and we have no closets so we are going to have to be very creative throughout the whole house on where we can put things. It can be very frustrating, but I'm sure we'll make it all work.

Our First Bank Holiday

Well I'm still not sure what a "Bank Holiday" is other than an excuse for the country to have a long weekend break. August Bank Holiday seemed to come the week before Labor Day, but it sure doesn't seem like Labor Day should be here either. Where did the summer go? We decided to spend our Monday off at Nene Park...along with hundreds of other Peterboroughites (???). It was another beautiful day, around 20 degrees C (around 70 degrees F). Nene Park is a large park trust in the middle of Peterborough which has lots of different lakes, playgrounds, and walking paths. We did lots of walking and looking at the ducks. Mom and dad even bought popsicles for fun and Addie got to taste as well. We headed home after a couple of hours and to our wonderful suprise, one of our neighbors invited us over for a British cookout. He was emphatic to tell us that it wouldn't be like the huge BBQ's we have in the States. We had a lovely time meeting Sara and Simon. I tried Pimm's with lemonade (their lemonade is actually carbonated lemon flavored drink like Sprite) with limes and cucumber mixed in...it was actually quite refreshing. They made a ton of food and the highlight was the pavlov dessert that Sara made...it's an Australian sweet with fresh whipping cream and raspberries on top. We got a lesson on "football" because I accidentally called it soccer and Simon showed us that he was a bit NY Jets fan after telling us that we would be able to get NFL coverage on Sky TV so we were pretty pumped. Sara is a teacher and did a teacher exchange with a gal who lives outside of St. Louis but here parents live in Germantown Hills which is just north of where we lived in Washington, IL. She talked about how much she enjoyed visiting the States and loved to shop for clothes there and how she brought back little satchels of some drink - it was actually Kool-aid packets. Our friends Danny and Min where there as well so it was a great day!!!

Boot Sales and Belvoir Castle

Today we decided to do some local siteseeing and headed north through the country side up to Belvoir (pronounced Bee-vor - yeah it screwed us up also) Castle. On the way we noticed some unusally high amounts of traffic in Stamford and then as we passed a sign that said "Boot Sale Sunday" I told Kevin we had to stop. I had seen something about boot sales on a channel that would be equivalent to TLC and they are like garage sales except out the back of your car...they call a car's trunk a "boot" over here. We saw lots of interesting things old, new, odd, and just wierd. Our goal was to find some new toys for the Addster and we made out like bandits. We jumped right in and bought some books for 30 pence each (60 cents) which we thought was good but the going rate books on the other side of the grounds was only 10 pence each so we loaded up over there. We found a cool block set, a Playskool farm and a Weebleville town all in perfect condition and we only spent 6 pounds ($12). After we loaded up our car boot with "bits and bobs" we headed north through some very beautiful villages and finally made it to the castle which is out in the middle of nowhere. The castle is still lived in by the Duke and Duchess of Rutland so parts of it are inaccessible, but we got to look around a lot of the rooms and the gardens. The only way to take pictures on the inside of the castle is to by a photography license for 2 pounds...we passed on that. They had some British soldier re-inactments going on that day so we got to watch them march and shoot at each other and shoot off canons...pretty cool. We brought a picnic to eat, but forgot our blanket so we had to sit on a stone wall underneath a several hundred year old oak tree...not a bad alternative. The castle was pretty neat but probably only worth visiting once for us. We agreed that we had been spoiled by seeing Warwick and Windor Castles that this couldn't compare, but we would recommend to others...the drive up to it is worth it wether you like the castle or not. We found that our stroller is a bit challenging to manuver because of its size. Also they didn't really thing back in the 13th century that they would need to make castles "push chair" accesible. We ended up having to carry Addie around and she gets pretty squirming in new places and wants to grab everything...even 200 year old swords and stuff. Also we had to haul the stroller up and down steep flights of stairs in the garden.