Happy Christmas - Our English Christmas

Christmas morning!!!! The kids woke up around 7 AM and didn't seem in too much of a hurry to get down stairs though. Grandma was downstairs waiting for them though snapping pictures as they came down. Santa Claus had come, ate his cookies and milk and left some "prezzies" by the fireplace and filled the kids' stockings. The big present the kids got was an easel with chalk, markers and paper.

Addison and Harrison both got Disney songbooks and CD's from Daddy!!!

Santa brought Harrison some of his first duplo blocks.

Santa also brought the kids a collection of Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs books and read along CD. (It's become a favorite for our kids to watch on TV and now with Harrison getting a few dinos for Christmas, we've got the real life guy living in our house now.)

Addison got a little senorita dress from Emily and Gemma that they bought in Mallorca while they were on holiday. I saw these when we were in Barcelona and thought they were so cute.

Emily found some way to get me a Pampered Chef apron as I love to cook and LOVE Pampered Chef. I guess only consultants are able to get these but I've had a wonderful consultant I've worked with and Emily got a hold of her to help her out.

The kids got Kevin this year's style of Leicester Tigers CAT rugby shirt. Also I ordered a travel coffee cup with their picture on it so he had a decent cup to bring back and forth to work with some cute faces on it.

This year I made a very special gift for Addison. I had my old Cabbage Patch Kid that I got when I was about 5-6 years old and thought it would be fun to give to her this year. I made some new clothes for the doll - two dresses, a pair of overalls, a nice shirt and bunny rabbit fleece PJs.

We worked pretty fast once we got back to get a nice photograph we took of the Matterhorn printed and framed for Mike and Sally to take back with them so they could have an instant reminder of their wonderful European holiday.

Kevin went all out this year and got me the most beautiful skirt outfit from Monsoon along with some tall boots!!! It is a very European look and I finally had a fun go out outfit. He also got me the purse (wallet) that matched my handbag (purse) that he got me for my birthday. I also got a Bose iPod speaker so that I could finally enjoy that iPod we bought just before we moved to the UK.

Addison had only one thing she had been asking to have for Christmas and it was a jump rope or what they call a "skipping rope" here. Funny thing is that Santa brought her a bright yellow jump rope, but Grandma Sue sent her a princess one and Auntie Crystal sent her a froggy one so she ended up with not one but THREE jump ropes. Then all she could talk about was jumping rope with Grandma Sally.

Addison of course found out how fun it was to open presents and kept looking for more and more to open. She even found ways to help Harry open some as well. Addison certainly loved everything she got and even love everything Harrison got as well...she found some interesting ways to play with them as well. She introduced Harry's dinosaur to his new drill. Looks like she could be an animal dentist some day.

As I worked on getting our dinner put together, Addison played with her new PlayDough Octapus toy with Grandma Sally.

We attempted to have a bit of a traditional English Christmas meal. I prepared the turkey with bacon wrapped on it and also sausages with bacon wrapped around them. But then we had our American stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, crescent rolls, and cranberry sauce. I did make a sticky toffee pudding and Eton Mess for dessert which are very English and Mike didn't believe me that they were because they tasted so good!!!

After dinner we Skyped Sally's sister and brother in law and then my mom and dad so that they could watch the kids open their presents from my side of the family. The kids were pretty tired so we let them go and put the kids down for a nap. Then Kevin and I called them back when my sister turned up at my parent's house so we could watch them open their presents. It was kind of like being home, but not really. It was great that we did get to see them somewhat on the distorted pictures through Skype, but frustrating since our connection was so poor.

We rested and just enjoyed the rest of our day and evening with Mike and Sally as they were packed up and ready to head out Saturday morning back to the States. We had a most wonderful Christmas and it was great getting to have family with us. I'm really glad we did it at least once, but there really is no place like "home" for the holidays so I hope we get back to Iowa next year.

Christmas Eve in Glinton

It's Christmas Eve morning and it was time to make some deliveries. With all those Christmas cookies that I made earlier on in the month plus the ones we made yesterday, Sally helped me load up Christmas cookie plates for some of our neighbors.

I popped on my Santa hat, loaded up our wagon with the cookies and Addison came along to help me deliver our Christmas gifts.

I had found some really cool Christmasy bags to wrap up the presents and put a little note on them.

At 4:15 we headed down towards the church to attend St. Benedict's Christmas Eve service here in the village. The service didn't start until 5 but it's a small church and it gets packed up fast. It was a good thing we did get there when we did because there ended up not being any standing room left once the service started. The bell ringers were in the back and it looked like they were randomly pulling on bells but it really was a song of sorts.

Inside the church it like most typical village churches, all stone with wooden pews. The service was really nice though. We sang several Christmas hymns and they had speakers talk through the Christmas story kind of in modern times speech. The speaker system wasn't too good so it was hard hearing the speakers, but it was really neat to sing along to familiar songs from our Christmas Eve's past but some of the melodies were different here...for example O Little Town of Bethleham. Also a big enthusiastic song they all sang in different parts, men and women/children, was Good King Wenceslas, not one I've ever sang in church before.

After church we walked across the road to the Blue Bell, our local pub. Before any one chastizes me for bringing my children to a "bar" on Christmas Eve, it is totally different here to go to the pub. It was more like getting together with family at a local place in town and enjoying each other's company.

We did enjoy a glass of wine and the kids had fun playing with each other. What a wonderful evening!!!

Once we got home we fed the kids and sent them off to bed to await Santa Claus. The the adults nestled in to enjoy some chili, veggies, and shrimp cocktail. About an hour later we heard Addison rustling around so I went to check on her. She reminded me that we hadn't put Santa's cookies and milk out and Rudolf's carrot. Silly mommy am I that I forgot, but this was our first time in our own house for Christmas. Then I had a long evening of wrapping up presents...I have learned my lesson for waiting until the last minute, but I had lots of last minute shopping after we got back so I guess I couldn't get too anxious before hand. I did have fun doing it though....can't wait until morning!

"Home" (aka England) for the Holidays

It was so great to be "home" for the holidays...home being our own house in England. This was to be our first time to wake up in our own house on Christmas morning since Kevin and I had been married. Kevin had to go into work for a couple days to sort stuff out since he missed Monday, but when he did get to be home it was great. He and the kids "wrestled" a lot. It was of their favorite things to do now having Kevin and I lay down on our back and they jump on us and we tickle them back.

Grandma Sally got to help the kids make up a bunch more Christmas cookies. We saved making sugar cookies until she came and with an extra bag of chocolate stars in the pantry we just HAD to make another batch of Peanut Butter Blossoms!!!

Harrison was sure getting in the holiday spirit.

Don't know if I've ever had a picture of me in my kitchen, but here is one with me in my glory, decorating Christmas cookies. I still miss all of the counter space I used to have in Washington, but it feels cozy I guess. We got so many lovely Christmas cards this year and lined them all up on the window sill. I felt so bad that we didn't get to send any out this year...timing just wasn't right with us leaving that week before and then rushing to get Christmas gifts mailed home in time.

The kids just seemed to be so excited to be back and playing with all their toys and Grandpa I think enjoyed just getting to rest.

We did have a pleasant surprise when we did get home to England was that there was snow on the ground in Peterborough. Not that we hadn't enjoyed all the snow we had in Switzerland but to have snow for Christmas in England which is a very, very uncommon occurrence here.

Since we don't get much snow here and if we do it doesn't last long so we got the kids out to play a bit in it. We headed out to the back garden to play on the climbing frame.

Addison had fun making snow angels.

We also did a little walk down the street and back. It was so fun to see the kids getting to experience this with Grandma and Grandpa. Also this was the first time we have actually been in England during the shortest days of the winter as it is only about 3: 30PM and the sun is almost down.

Stranded in Paris...Making Our Way Home

Okay....I know it sounds bad to say "We got stranded in Paris" but it wasn't like we had time to swing by and see the Eiffel Tower or any other sites. With the Eurostar closed indefinitely we were pretty desperate to just find a way to get home. Granted if they would have told us that things would have been up and running two days later and with them paying for our hotel and food while we were there we could have taken in the sites, but no information was being shared. Rumors of all sorts were running wild in the queues and queues of people with tempers flaring.

Sarah had found us two rooms at a hotel not far from the train station. We ended up on a crazy taxi ride with a driver not knowing where he was going and took 3x as long to get to the hotel and then said we owed him more money than what the the meter read. Of course we couldn't read French and it was written on the inside of the cab window that it was an extra 3 Euro for the luggage and 5 Euro for having a baby with us. So what should have been really a 5 Euro taxi ride turned into a 15 Euro ride and he didn't give us a receipt to turn in...didn't start our "stranded" time out very well.

The rooms we got in Paris were actually pretty nice for Paris. Most complaints people have about Paris is that rooms are very small and very expensive. We got two triple rooms, but had both of our kids with us. Addie got her own little single bed and Kevin, Harry and I squeezed in a tiny double bed. Kevin and I ventured out to find us some food since it was late we didn't want to take the kids out so we found a little supermarket to buy some lunch meat, bread, butter, fruit and drinks. Same stuff we had been eating all day but it was the easiest thing we could think of. We actually had a computer at the hotel to check out ferries and train tickets for the next day if the Eurostar wasn't up and running. We did get to email family to let them know we were okay as we were sure this would make the international news. We didn't get too much sympathy when we said we were "stranded in Paris," but they were glad to hear from us.

One cool thing about Paris and about Europe in general is that things are so laxidasical. Of course why wouldn't you have Heineken in the pop/snack machine!!!

The next morning at 5:30 Mike, Kevin and I headed up to the train station to get in line with the Eurostar by 6AM as they requested we do. That didn't amount to anything other than we ventured to buy ourselves train tickets to Calais to try to catch the ferry to Dover. We headed back to the hotel to get packed up and all headed back to the train station for our noon train out.
Our only little bit of site seeing was seeing a pretty church just a block or so from Gare du Nord train station and the really cool Metro sign outside the front entrance.

We tried getting a sit down lunch but the staff wasn't being too cooperative with us and we didn't want to waste time and miss our train so we grab yet more cold sandwiches and chips to fill our bellies. We caught our train, but we had to make a connection in another town. On our first leg we were in the same situation as everyone else and of course you all start talking. We found out from a lady that all the ferry tickets were sold out, but we could try ringing them to see if we could get some while were on our way. Kevin had no luck booking anything and it looked as though we were going to spend another night over in Calais. I just started to sob while I held Harrison in my arms while he finally took a nap and just ached that I couldn't get my kids home. Then I thought about bugging Sarah again and I text her. About 20 minutes later she texts back and says she got us the last 6 tickets on the 7PM ferry!!!! It felt like Christmas came early. But as we made our connection that train was delayed and when we finally got on it, it was so jam packed with people and luggage that there was literally no where to move or sit. I did get a spot to hold me and both of the kids but it was an agonizing 45 minute ride.

When we got to Calais there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground and people all moving in a herd towards the shuttle buses to get to the port. While at the back of the queue someone came up to us and said, "you have children, come with me up to the front of the line." What a nice gesture and we were on our way in less than 10 minutes. Once we got to the port we had no clue what to do. There were well over a thousand people standing in line all the way outside. Again we had someone approach us and tell us that if we had children to come inside and since we had booked tickets that we could move to the front of the line. It was awful pushing our way through loads of people with our stroller and luggage...you could just feel the glares. Then we sat and waited for at least an hour before we got to the front of the line to have our ticket printed and then everything was bottle-necked because the police weren't allowing people through until the boat was searched. Then security only let about 50 people at a time through for passport control. Then we stood in another line to get on busses to take us onto the actual ferry. I think we got to Calais at 3 and finally were on the ship by 6:30. Again we got lucky since we had the kids and a stroller we got to take the lift up straight away and got straight into the cafe for a really nice fish and chips meal.

We were pretty much done eating before the ship took off at around 7PM. Since we had over an hour or so to kill Sally and I took the kids to the arcade to play on the cars and Dance, Dance Revolution. We had heard that the ferries normally take on about 30-40 foot passengers a time but they were now trying to accommodate over 500 a journey. I made comment that it felt like the "Evacuation of Dunkirk" when the British evacuated over 250,000+ troops in something like 48 hours from France during WWII. It didn't matter if you had tickets booked or not (that just got you to the front of the line), they were filling up the boats with first come first serve.

It was actually a really nice journey across, but again once we got to Dover it was chaos again. We got off the boat and got piled onto shuttle busses that we thought were bringing us to the train station, but turns out they driver told me he was just driving us through the terminal to passport control. He also said that the shuttle buses to the train stations weren't running anymore. They took the drivers off of that route to pick up all people from the ships. Our options were to catch a cab or walk two miles to the train station. Well with 500 people fighting for transportation, I tried booking it to the taxi area. The line was already 50+ people long and no cabs in sight, so we followed the flow of walkers to the train station. Kevin and I went ahead with the kids to sort out a train. We had purchased tickets over the phone to insure we had a spot on the train and they had to be used by midnight or I was out 72 GBP.

Well we got to the train station to discover that all Eurostar passengers could use their Eurostar tickets for valid passage on the train to London....WHAT!!!! I just shelled out 72 GBP for a FREE ride!!!! Any who...there was a 9PM train on the high speed SouthEast Rail right into St. Pancras station...AWESOME!!! This way when we got to London all we had to do was walk across to King's Cross and not have to fight the Underground.

As we waited for our train, one of the famous steam locomotives came trudging through. It was pulling one of those fancy dinner trains that you get to eat a 5 course meal while taking a 2+ hour train ride in a proper dining car. Found out later that the "steamies" (Thomas tank engine lingo) were actually helping out move people up to London because they weren't affected by the weather since they didn't rely on electronics used by the other trains that were having troubles.

We got to London around 11 and just made it onto a really packed First Capitol Connect train which seemed very strange to me for a Monday night so late. Of course we were in such a hurry and just wanted to catch a train and with no schedule we happened to catch one of the long trains (meaning it stopped at every stop - almost an hour and a half). We found out that trains got suspended into Cambridge because it was snowing and they were sending everyone to Hitchin to catch shuttle busses into Cambridge and that is why the train was so full. What a miserable night for all those people as well.

We called for a cab on the way back and it was nice having them waiting for us. We didn't get home until about 1:15AM on Tuesday, but at least we were home. What an adventure....

Heading Home

Our last meal in our winter paradise get away. We tried to use up all the extra little bits we had left in the fridge. We had our sandwiches all made, fruit and goodies packed along with our jam packed suitcases. This time around we got lots on nice souvenirs. I got a cookbook on Fondues which is pretty big in Switzerland, but I wish now that I would have gotten a really nice fondue crock. Kevin got his standard beer stein which seemed to be quite expensive but it was in Francs which is like dollars and compared to what we've spent on previous ones in Euro it was about even I guess. Harrison got a genuine Swiss army knife that we had engraved with his name. Addison got her traditional porcelain doll that she begged to play with, but we enthusiastically said no.

Harrison was chillin' out while we scampered around the apartment to make sure we had everything. I still can't believe how mesmerizing his eyes are.

Just a quick glance back at what our living room looked like with are cute little Christmas tree.

Here is Ashley our hostess for the week. She is actually English and from the Stratford-Upon-Avon area. She was so wonderful to us and helped us out so much.

One last look out our bedroom windows with our great view of the Matterhorn.

Sally cleaning up our kitchen.

We got a really nice picture of the kid with Grandpa Mike and Grandma Sally out on our deck over looking Zermatt and the Matterhorn. Had to make this a quick shot since it was about -15 C outside.

Our chalet - we stayed on the top floor on the left side. It was a split level apartment so we got two balconies. The owners of the chalet actually live on the second floor with the windows. They were in Austria this week so we didn't get to meet them.

Our little family in front of the really, really big Christmas tree in the square of city centre Zermatt. They actually have full sized plates painted up and hung on the tree as decorations.

We headed into the train station around 8:10AM to catch the 9:22 AM train out of Zermatt and to start our long journey home.

Everyone got all nestled into our seats on the train.

Going back we actually had day light for the trains through the mountains and the views were amazing. It was fun watching the train snake its way down through the mountains with all the snow.

Some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever scene in my life. The Alps are just so majestic.

Our train made a stop in a town called St. Nikolas and they turned their tower into a huge Santa Claus.

As we grew closer to the Swiss/French border the villages scattered along the hillsides in between all the vineyard fields. They have found a way to utilize some of the most difficult land and make some good wine!!!!

We we got to Lausanne it was horribly cold and we saw that our train was delayed 20 minutes - not too bad, but then it turned into 30 minutes then 45. We only had two hours in Paris to make our connection and with a 45 minute delay we were still okay but after our little episode on the way here I didn't like how close it was.

As we travelled on the TGV train from Lausanne to Paris the weather got really bad and the snow was really coming down. I decided to text my friend Sarah to see if she could pick up a pint of milk for us so the kids could have breakfast when we get home. She text back and said she asked if we were meant to come back on the Eurostar because she had just heard on the radio that all travel through the Chunnel was suspended. My heart sunk and that was when the chaos and what I'm sure a 50 GBP mobile phone bill started.

With the Eurostar supposedly closed we tried to think of other ways to get home. Sarah worked with us for almost 2 hours via texts to try lining up ferry tickets, train tickets, rental cars, and taxis. Our train was delayed into Paris almost 2 hours, the weather was awful every where, the motorways were closed into and out of Dover, it was an absolute mess and after a week a paradise we just wanted to get home....