Quiet New Year's Eve

We had a quiet New Year's Eve at home.  The Union did not accept Zach's offer, so he had to work most of the day to revamp a plan to present the following week. Thankfully, he was able to make home for dinner. We kicked off our evening with a few small appetizers.  Despite having worked most of the day, Zach cooked up some amazing steaks. 

We toasted our family and friends with a little champagne for the grown-ups and 7-Up for the the kids.  You should know we raised our glasses to you and thanked you for all your love and support. We could not have made this journey without you.  

We had a few leftover Christmas crackers and decided to pop them open again.  We always love rocking our paper crowns.  We even got to indoctrinate Sully into the tradition. After which, he promptly ripped it off and attempted to eat it.

From our family to yours, we wish you a Happy New Year full of joys and exciting adventures!!!

Dad, Can I get a Pony?

It was cold and frosty day, but everyone needed a little sunshine after being cooped up in the house.  We got on the footpath behind our house today and took it in a new direction.





Much to our surprise we ran across these beautiful horses.  The owners have a field right in the middle of town. The fence runs right along a portion of our footpath.  The horses were so good with the kids, and let each of them pet them.  One of them even nuzzled Sully and Desmond. The kids loved their new "pets".

We also found some great climbing trees.  The boys especially loved them.  We are in trouble when they can climb them on their own. :)

Road Trip to the Outlets

Look out world!  I found an outlet mall in the UK!!!

Since it was only an hour from our house, I thought it would be worth it for the family, of course, to verify that it was up to our standards as outlet malls go.  I wasn't disappointed.  Lots of designer brands and great sales.  However, I think I got the last parking spot at 10 a.m.  They opened at 9:30 a.m.  I thought it was the holiday weekend, but apparently it is always like this.  Someone's Bentley....yes, I said Bentley was up on the curb...as people began to park wherever they could.  Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors actually had bouncers at the doors and were only letting people in as people left.  You had to wait in line to get in.

This is what it looks like on their promo page.

This is more like the crowds I saw the day I was there.

I know I should probably be visiting ancient cities filled with lots of history, but is it wrong that today felt a little bit like being back at home?  Just wish I had some of my usual shopping buddies with me. You know who you are.

Now what you don't get in the States is the views on my English countryside drive.  There is not a huge network of highways here, so most of my 1 hour drive was on two lane roads through small villages.  I didn't take any pictures on my phone as I was driving as that would have been very dangerous and illegal, but here are a few I found on Google of some of my favorite towns I passed through.

One of the hills I drove over gave me a great view of Wales which is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous.  It looked a lot like the picture below as we had just had snow the night before.  This picture looks like I'm on the mountainside.  Keep in mind this is not my picture. Imagine me on the road down there in the valley.

I also drove by this massive building known as the Bolesworth estate.  It is amazing to think about owning something like that.  Picture your last name + estate.  Has a nice ring to it doesn't it?  And hey, if it comes with a building like that.....

As you get closer to our house, the countryside looks more like this.  It loosely reminds me of the Shire from the novel The Hobbit.  One of these days I'll get some actual photo evidence of my own, but for now you can get the idea.  Most of the time (when I'm not lost) I really never miss the driving down a highway.  I mean if you get a view like this you find that you don't miss the extra lane and easily accessible gas stations/fast food joints.

Boxing Day: Shopping and Snow

So Black Friday is just starting to find its way to the UK.  It makes some sense because they don't celebrate Thanksgiving.  As a result, there is no holiday, and most people are working.  However, the day after Christmas is HUGE in the UK.  It is known as Boxing Day.  I originally thought that this was because everyone is in fact boxing up all their Christmas items.  Thankfully, Wikipedia saved me from making this terrible American assumption.  Boxing Day is actually based on the following tradition from the 1800s:

The earliest attestations of the term as being from England in the 1830s, defining it as 'the first week-day after Christmas-day, observed as a holiday on which post-men, errand-boys, and servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas-box'.^[4]

The term Christmas-box, meanwhile, dates back to the seventeenth century, and amongst other things meant

A present or gratuity given at Christmas: in Great Britain, usually confined to gratuities given to those who are supposed to have a vague claim upon the donor for services rendered to him as one of the general public by whom they are employed and paid, or as a customer of their legal employer; the undefined theory being that as they have done offices for this person, for which he has not directly paid them, some direct acknowledgement is becoming at Christmas.^[5]

So today it looks more like the picture above.  Everyone seems to be gifting themselves and not the postman.  Long story short, I thought I would partake in this tradition.  Only to find that this is when the expert shoppers of the world show up to play their "A" game.  This was the "queue" that formed outside a very popular and often expensive store here in the UK that was rumored to have 50% of their entire store. Yes that is just for one store. Things sell out so quickly in the UK.  To give you an idea, I was there 30 minutes after the store opened, and there were only 5 items on the 5-6 year old rack.  This store is similar to a Gymboree.  When has that ever happened in the States?  That was only the beginning of the crowds.  By 1 p.m. I could barely move in most stores.  I opted to head home and walked out into a blanket of snow.

Back at home, Sierra and Zach had built quite an adorable snowman if I may say so myself.  He was, of course, dubbed Olaf and there was a lot of "Do you want to build a snowman?"  sung around our house that night.

Christmas Morning Recap

The kids woke up at 7:00 a.m. and were overjoyed to see that Santa had left presents.  Sierra was certain that Santa had read her note which read, "Merry Christmas Santa! I hope you a good night sleep.:  She was also happy he ate all the cookies.

 Then it was onto the presents.  Sierra's favorite gifts this year were her Barbie camper and her trampoline.

This was Sullivan's first Christmas, and let me tell you he had a ball!  Between the wrapping paper and the toys, he didn't know what to play with first.  His two favorite presents from Santa were his car and his ring tower.

This Christmas was all about Ninja Turtles for Desmond.  He got his "Turtle house" and had a great time taming all the bad guys with his turtle crime fighting team.

Otherwise, this was a very quiet Christmas for us.  We spent the remainder of the day watching Christmas movies, playing with toys, and talking to family via Skype.  I spent a good part of the afternoon in the kitchen.  Zach got us a 10 lb turkey from a local butcher, so I whipped up some homemade gravy, broccoli casserole, macaroni and cheese, and a few other fixins to go with it.  All in all a great British Christmas!

Christmas Eve Activities Part 1: Wake Up Calls & Walks

Two of my best presents this week were to wake up on Christmas Eve after 7:00 a.m.  When I walked downstairs, I got to see my whole family snuggled up on the couch.  My heart runneth over.

It was an absolutely beautiful day!  We decided to go for a walk on the footpath behind our house.  All you have to do is to walk out our back gate and you are instantly in the woods with several trails paved or unpaved at your disposal.  We love it!  Today we opted for a trip to the soccer fields about a quarter of a mile down the road.  Zach packed our sky rocket.   It literally goes 20 feet in the air and blows the kids' minds every time.

Please note that my children refuse to walk on the paved path if there is any chance that they can put their wellies into a mud puddle.



I love our little outdoor baby!  Sullivan is a trooper.  He does not like the cold (a true Southern boy), but he does love the outdoors.  It is the one thing that makes him happy every time.

Christmas Eve Part 2: Jumpy House

It was so cold, but Zach found a blower for our jumpy house that could run on the UK voltage.  I mean we had to put it to the test, right?  And really what better day than Christmas Eve when our kids have a ton of pent up energy?  It sure did the trick.

Christmas Eve Activities Part 3: The Presents!

So much excitement!  It was finally time for the big show!  At our house, Christmas Eve is the night you open presents from family.  I wish I could post all the pictures.  The kids were ecstatic about everything they opened.  They are so blessed to have so many people who love them enough to find a way to get presents to a foreign country.  This was also memorable for us because this was the first year the kids wanted to get each other presents.  They were as excited to see each other open their gifts as they were to open their own.  

They were so excited in fact that that did not want to go to bed.  Desmond fell asleep with two ninja turtles and a helicopter in his hands. Sierra tucked all her Barbies into beds in her room.  They only way we got them to go to bed was to remind them that Santa couldn't come until they were sleeping. 

New Christmas Traditions

When Zach's coworkers learned that we would be spending Christmas here, they put together a basket of goodies to introduce us to some traditional English Christmas food.  There are some things we recognize, but lots of items that were new to us.   Considering Zach is in the middle of some extremely stressful and contentious union negotiations, this was a welcomed gift.  Look at that basket! It really is amazing, isn't it?

Sherry and whiskey, along with the usual wine and champagne, are pretty much standard Christmas drinks here in Britain.  We also got some pork & red pepper pate with altantic salmon which we are guessing would be served with crackers as an appetizer.  With a little help from Google, we learned that Scotch eggs are a hard-boiled egg enclosed in sausage meat and rolled in breadcrumbs then fried.  This actually sounds like something you would find in South Carolina.  I'm surprised it hasn't caught on sooner.  The back of the Haywards Red Cabbage and Traditional Onions was quite enlightening:

Red Cabbage:  "Put on top of mashed potato and serve with a hot meal"
Onions:  "Use in a Cheddar ploughman's for Haywards inspiration!"

( A ploughman's lunch (abbrev. to ploughman's) is an English cold meal which consists of cheese, pickle, and bread.^[1]Additional items such as boiled eggs, ham, and pickled onions may be added.)

Next we have some local pickles.  The back of the jar states that it would be "lovely a top a cheese sandwich."  We are inclined to disagree, but a hamburger might not be so bad.  The sausage rolls are the British twist on our sausage rolls from back home only these have a whole sausage stuffed inside a pastry.



This is a holiday flavor of crisps that apparently you can only find this time of year. And then we arrive at the sweets....which I (the resident sweet tooth) can totally get behind.  The British love their sweets especially their chocolate.  So in case you can't tell that is 5 boxes of chocolate, 4 large chocolate snowmen, a chocolate reindeer, and if that doesn't suit your fancy there's 2 pounds of cookies to boot.

 We are going to be stuffed this Christmas. We only wish all of you were here to share it with us.  We would offer you all of the above and brew you a proper cup of Yorkshire tea. 

Christmas Traditions: Santa, Cookies, and Crafts

We are excited to make new traditions here in the United Kingdom, but there are a few staples that we could just not part with this year. Our first stop this morning was Santa's grotto in our local mall.  It was a masterpiece of lights and fairytales.  They had a giant tree of lights that stretched to the ceiling with huge branches extending out.  Each corner was devoted to a different fairy tale.  The kids' favorite was Beauty and the Beast.

This Santa convinced Sierra that he was real because he said that he remembered how tall Sierra and Desmond were last year.  He also said he hadn't met Sullivan before and he was very excited to see him finally.  Sierra said wide-eyed as we left that "Mommy, he was REAL!"  Apparently all the other Santas we have met were fake.

Side Note: Our mall has one of the most amazing clocks I have ever seen.  It's hard to tell from the pictures, but at each quarter of the hour a ball goes down the stair steps into the clock and out the shoot underneath the frog.  It's spit out on to a wheel that rides to the other end of the mall.  The frog will periodically move or blink his eyes which blows the kids' mind every time.

At home, we made cookies for Santa. Most British children leave Father Christmas mince pies, but we are keeping with the American tradition of good ole cookies.  Thanks to Nana for the British oven size cookie sheets and cookie scoop.  The ovens are much smaller here and my American-sized cookie sheets just barely fit.   We now all set with treats for Santa.

Lastly, we made a few Christmas crafts.  This year Sierra was very excited to make Christmas ornaments out of beads.  They actually came out very cute.  They both made adorable Christmas trees out of dot markers.

British Christmas Terms

The following words/phrases are used here for Christmas and have caught all of us off guard.

Father Christmas  (Santa)

Mother Christmas  (Mrs. Claus)

Lapland (North Pole)

How many sleeps 'til Christmas?

Telford Town Centre: Soft Play and Library

What do you do on a rather cold and blustery day?  Indoor activities, of course!  Since all the kids are on holiday break and finally feeling better, we headed to our local town centre.  We found the most amazing indoor playground (British term: soft play).  The kids must have climbed to the top of the structure 20 times to ride the slides down.  Even little Sully had a ball in the soft block area. 

We headed to the library next, but on the way we had to stop at our favorite interactive sculpture.  It is a giant pushpin board.  You push on it from one side, and it pops out on the other side.  This never ceases to amaze my children. 

We have been meaning to use our new library cards for several weeks now.  Today we finally spent time at our local library.  It is amazing!  It overlooks the lake and even has a tree house.  The kids spent an hour looking at books in different cozy locations.  Lots of fun was still had on this cold and blustery day!

Trentham Gardens: Part 1 The Playground

We traveled to Stoke-On-Trent (about 22 miles from our home and an hour by car) to visit one of a well-known gardens in the area on the restored Trentham Estate.  Click here if you want to visit their website.  Normally, this would be something we would try to go to in the spring because the winter doesn't provide much of an opportunity to see all the flowers, but several people have told us how pretty it is decorated for Christmas.

We entered the gardens, and the kids found out there was a playground.  That's where we headed first!  One of the things that Zach and I both love about the playgrounds here is they are all made out of reclaimed wood.  It is also designed like obstacle courses with each obstacle coming after the next and creating a path for the kids to follow.  It gives you the feel like you are at an adventure ropes course. We are often amazed at how well Sierra does.  She is fearless!

This playground even had a built in zipline. It is hard to tell from the picture below, but you start on a platform and jump off.  Both kids rode it with a little help from dad.



Sullivan and Desi's favorite part of the playground were the swings and the cars.  The cars had their own race track that the boys could drive on.

 Daddy got the kids laughing hilariously on the British version of the tire swing.   Although, the kids loved being outside.  This was their favorite place we went to all day.