Little Artist

Gemma came over to play one afternoon with the kids and she helped Addison make this beautiful picture of her, Harry, Gemma and Lellie. Addison was very proud of their joint venture. Knowing Harrison's tendencies to erase things I thought I'd get a picture of this amazing picture now.

Stamford Christmas Market

With all the snow we had just over two weeks ago, the ever famous Lincoln Christmas Market was cancelled!!!! We were crushed as it was a big Christmas time tradition for us. But we did happen to find out that the Stamford Christmas market was going on this weekend...yeah!!! We made our way up after lunch time which we should have known better that parking was going to be atrocious. We ended up parking way out on the west edge of town and walked into the city centre...just parked it on the edge of a main road and shut it down just like everyone else.

I LOVE markets and Christmas markets are the most fun!!!! English ones especially as they come from right out of the story books or in some cases science fiction books as you'll see later. What would Christmas time be without Hot Roasted Chestnuts?!!!

The Lion's club even had a little Grotto set up for the kids to visit with Santa.

There were various music groups scheduled to play all around the city centre. When we got to Red Lion Square this brass ensemble was playing Christmas tunes.

And I really thought I had seen it all living in the mid-West, but I have never seen a police "tractor," but's totally legit.

There was a neat little group singing further up the hill. I swear I had seen them before somewhere, but they were really good singing folk-type music. They were called "Penny-Les" with her name being Penny and he being Les...a pretty cute play on words.

All sorts of foods to eat at the market from wood fired pizza,

to cakes and pastries to loads of sweeties,

to crisps (potato and parsnip chips) flavored like Haggis....

to pork and turkey sandwiches with stuffing...

(and this little piggy went to Stamford market)..

....mulled wine is another Christmas time staple and lovely and something to keep you warm.

And if you weren't old enough to drink mulled wine then you could have mulled fruit punch with a mince pie.

Instead of the flower stalls you see evergreens...

There was even a little ice skating rink set up. I don't think you'll be doing any triple sal cows on it, but it looked fun.

We found a few of Santa's little helpers...looks like they did a little Polar run or something.

We stopped by one of our favorite stores in Stamford, Nook Furniture, to check out their Christmas goodies. This is where we got our kitchen table and chairs and curvy shelf.

Just outside the Nook were these funny dancers covered up with greenish ribbons and hats with feathers. The clanked sticks together as the accordion played on.

This was the funniest thing we saw all day. I think this girl was trying to raise money for a children's charity but didn't look all that motivated to get close to people. But you gotta dig the puffy skirt, red leggings and green ear muffs.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

It was getting time for bed in the Dea household when all of a sudden I heard such a clatter. I sprang from the kids' bedroom to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash....to hear blaring music from the neighborhood next door. It was him, the jolly old man from up north coming around Glinton to visit all the little girls and boys in his red sleigh and blaring tunes before Christmas.

Eventhough they were in their PJs and ready for bed, we bundled up the kids and brought them outside to see Santa and give him a little wave. They were so excited, especially when Santa waved back at them. Okay, little ones, time to go to bed and dream of sugar plums and of Santa to come back in a few weeks.

Touring Cambridge at Christmastime

Today we thought it would be fun to go to Cambridge and check things out as Kevin's boss, Jason, was in town and we wanted him to be able to experience English Christmas time festivities here. The first place we headed was Market Square and got a little bite to eat. The kids enjoyed just getting to run about after being in the car for so long and sitting still on the bus ride into town.

Kev, Jason and I got some German sausages from one of the places at the market for a quick bite to eat.

We enjoyed some sounds of the season from this brass ensemble made up of what looked like students. They were quite good and the kids enjoyed dancing to the music. Kevin and Jason signed up for a 2 hour walking tour of the city since Kevin hadn't been able to do anything like that in Cambridge (remember I've been here about 3 times more than Kevin has playing tour guide).

As the boys went on their tour, the kids and I did our own exploring around the city centre. With our trip to Disney coming up I wanted to check out the Disney store for some fun things. They closed the shop in Peterborough so this was my chance to get some fun things to bring along on our trip. Well the queue was super long and the store was just packed so I just let the kiddos look around at stuff and dream. Harrison found his buddies, Buzz and Woody.

Addison loved and wanted everything and recognized all the characters and was super excited to even see Handy Manny and the Tools.

We made our way down some fun little alley way loaded with some really cute shops...I just love the look of all the little fish and chip shops as well.

We walked about around the colleges as well. The thing I will always remember well about Cambridge is the shear number of bicycles that are everywhere you look in this city. But that with the combination of the old gates and street signs is just classic.

Kevin and Jason were getting to tour King's Chapel, but I hadn't been there either so I attempted to bring the kids in and take a look around. It is absolutely amazing inside. They started building the Chapel in 1446 by the order of King Henry VII and work commenced on it for the next century. They main things to marvel over at the chapel are the 16th century stained glass windows, the fan vaulting ceiling, the Renaissance wood carved screens, and the painting by Rubens.

All the glass in the windows (except for those depicting The Last Judgement in the West Window and the upper half of the southwest window) are dated back to the 16th century which is actually quite rare for them to be so original. In WWII, all the glass was removed from the chapel in case it was bombed during the war and later all replaced...(what a job that had to be).

On the south side the windows from east to west depict the Resurrection, the Pentecost, Acts of the Apostles , the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin Mary. The upper lights contain Old Testament scenes that are parallels to the lower lights...for example, the temptation of Eve with the Assumption of Mary. (When I asked Kevin about the windows some time later after visiting Cambridge he said they had to do something with opposites in the Bible, like Christ and the Anti-Christ - yeah, I need to get him back to church to get his stories straight).

The kids really liked the Chapel. I wish I had known about the stories of the windows before going in so I could have looked for them. Kevin also mentioned something about the wood carving of Anne Boleyn was abruptly completed as the carver was taking more time to complete the project than the actual length of her and Henry VIII's marriage.

After going through the Chapel the kids and I checked out the rest of King's college which was actually open today. This is the big green in the middle of the college.

King's Chapel towers over us but my kiddos were towering over me in this pic...

Even in the winter, Cambridge foliage still looks alive. The river Cam is so beautiful and all of the little bridges crossing over it are so amazing. But seriously, people are still punting in the cold...hope no one falls in.

We needed a little sweetie fix so we stopped in a little cafe and the kids got a brownie to share and I got a big piece of Rocky Road...so yummy, but they were a mess. After the boys got done with their tour we went to eat an early supper at The Anchor pub, of course.

Preschool Christmas Bazaar

For the past month I had been helping out the parent's committee to organize a big fundraiser for the preschool. We did loads of publicity, gathering of raffle prizes, and sorting out games, activities for the kids, and stalls for people to sell things.

Finally the day was here and packed up half of my houses Christmas decorations to jazz up the big room we had along with some fun little bits I sewed up to sell at the stalls.

We did lots of neat little things that I can't wait to try out when we go back to the US for future fundraising events. This was our Tombola, which you paid 50p for a ticket and if it had a 0 or 5 at the end then you won the corresponding prize. All the tombola prizes were donated by parents and included biscuits, chocolates, wine, candies, "smellies" (lotions), and more.

We had great success in getting support from the local butcher shop, the McDonald's, John Lewis, Fratelli's in Stamford, Steve Gerrard with loads of great wine, my wonderful neighbor Kev Scott with a free MOT, and even free entries in the Peterborough Racing grounds for our raffle prizes...everyone helped get such great prizes and in selling raffle tickets. We printed up 250 tickets and should have done double that as we ran out and didn't have any available on the day of the event to sell to people who came to the actual event. (250 was a lot considered they had a tough time selling 100 tickets last year). As a thank you to the businesses that donated we brought big plates of leftover cakes and cookies from our bake sale!!!

The Lucky Dip is focussed more on the kiddies. It's a huge box filled with shredded up paper and then sweeties dumped in amongst the paper. For 10 p the kids can dunk their hands in and grab a sweetie.

Name the Bear was an amazing money maker for us as for 50 p a guess, the kids could pick from a list of 50 names listed on the little Christmas trees that could potentially be the bear's name. Kerry's dad, donated this amazingly huge teddy bear all wrapped up in cellophane and topped with a bow. All the kids were drooling over it!!!

We also had a Cakes Sale and when the British talk about cakes - it's not your run of the mill cookie bake sale. These ladies brought in loads of traditional Christmas cakes, fairy cakes, cupcakes, Victoria sponge cakes, chocolate crispies cakes, plum loafs and my friend Joanna made these absolutely amazing Polish cakes!!!! We had soooo many cakes for sale on top of the tea/coffee we sold with a slice of Victoria sponge for 1.50 GBP each.

We also got a helium tank donated for the cost of the balloons from the lady at Happy Faces so we sold those for 1 GBP each and what parent is going to deny a kid a balloon when everyone else has one.

I helped make sugar cookies for biscuit decorating. We let every child decorate one for free then any ones after that were 20p each. My kiddos quite enjoyed that one.

Our neighbor, Sandra, brought her twin boys - Andrew and William to the bazaar and they had a blast decorating cookies as well.

One of the stalls we had planned fell through about two weeks before the event so I thought that I could sew up a few fun things like little aprons, tool belts and crayon totes to sell. It took me all of two weeks working late into the evenings to get enough made up to have a nice display. It was a lot of work on top of all the other things to get ready but it was nice to get some exposure and it fit well with the other things for sale. Lana sold her hairbows, her friend sold some brownie and homemade cake mixes and another lady who sold perfumes caught us at the very last minute to get involved as well. Crazy thing was that I had someone from Pampered Chef lined up to come but about 5 minutes before I left to head to the school that morning she called and cancelled on me...I wasn't too happy, so I was glad this other lady was able to step in.

Father Christmas came to visit the children and we made him up a little grotto to sit in our little back room for pictures and the children would get a little present of sweeties from Santa. We only charged 2.50 per child for the picture and sweeties and it turned out brilliantly.

Finally, the highlight of the day was when the kids all gathered up around the Christmas tree and sang Christmas carols that they had been learning for the past month. They did such a great job and so did all the parents in pulling together such an amazing event. We raised around 500 GBP!!! Way to go everyone!!!

First Snow of the Year!!! It's really early...

In what feels more like traditional Midwest American weather this time of year, we got our first snow in England...the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Completely wild and completely unusual.

There wasn't much snow really but it packed well enough, so we thought we better get the kids out in it as we didn't know how long it would stick around.

How cool to be bundled up in winter gear already...what a minute...I like English winters because we don't get loads of snow and have it be cold. Well, there isn't that much to cause too much of a problem, so let's have fun!!!

We used up ever flake of snow in our front yard to make a little snow fort/thrown for the kids to sit at.

Then we thought we really needed to at least have a snowman. And of course if you have a snowman you have to dress him up right.

Harry got a little tired of how cold it was and was soon ready to go inside...he's never really liked the cold...guess it's because he was born in the heat of the summer!!!