Sunday Afternoon's

I love Sunday afternoons. The best is when you get home from church, turn on a show for the kids, get the hubby busy on his geneaology work, and then state that you will be retiring for a rest and are NOT to be disturbed. The kids are entertained for hours by their show and hubby is feeling the success of a dedicated afternoon working on his family line.......OR........You suddenly hear hubby start to holler, big sister start to cry, and baby brother bang and clang around. NOT to be disturbed is out the window as I begin to realise that whatever the problem is it obviously needs a mom intervention. Too late. The damage has been done, but dad has done a pretty good job of trying to handle things. How is it that in 30min. time the happily sitting children could create such a crisis as to disturb me from my much needed rest?

Here is the culprit after scrubbing off as much marker as Hubby could manage to get and leave all skin in tact.

Quite pleased with himself and the masterpiece he has created on his belly.

Sister getting scolded because she didn't use her good listening ears when she was told a gazillion times to put her markers away.

Hubby following up the scolding with a little sugar. I have never heard Hubby get that angry with the Pink One before, she usually gets a big tear in her eye and he is beside himself. Not this time.

After seeing that the situation while noisy had been handled and understanding that there would be no rest, I did what any good mom would do, left dad on his own and documented the whole tragic event. The carpet came clean, brother came sort of clean, and the Pink One hopefully learned her lesson. I definitely learned mine, there is NO rest for a weary mom :)

Learning Curve

I am certain that wherever you move you will have some sort of learning curve, such as: where are the nearest grocery stores, where are the schools, where is church, restaurants, movie theatres, the list goes on and on. I have yet to find the answers to some of these questions, but have been busy with a few things a little closer to home. I have a photo list of things that are different and unique to me and are present in my home.

1st: The washing machine is of course in the kitchen. The interesting thing to me is that it heats itself and so it is not connected to the water heater. This washing machine also does a really good job of getting the water out of your clothing so as to speed up the drying process.

2nd: All of the electrical outlets have on and off switches and then a fuse right next to them. This is really handy. Instead of turning my lamps off, I just turn off the outlet.

3rd: Almost all of my windows have key locks on them. I had never seen windows with key locks before, but just about all of the windows in my house have keys hanging out of them.

4th: Similar to the windows, the inside of my doors have key locks. Most doors in the UK automatically lock when the door shuts, but my house just so happens that you have to key lock the front door from the inside to lock the door. Kind of a hassle.

5th: I never knew what a "conservatory" was until I moved into this house. Most houses here have them, probably because they want all the light they can get in this climate. I LOVE my conservatory and am very grateful for the light it showers into my home.

6th: Condenser dryers. Have you heard of these? I really like it. The Condenser dryer sucks all of the water into a tank that you empty out when it gets full. Because of the way the dryer empties all you need to do is plug the dryer in, no other hosing or attachments needed to operate the dryer.

7th: Pull string lights. I have fond memories of pulling on my grandma's light string in her storage room when I was little. I just thought that was something from the 1950's. Wrong. They have these pull strings in most bedrooms and bathrooms.

8th: Electric showers. This shower like the washing machine heats itself. This means that this shower is not dependent on the water heater for heat.

9th: Turning your water heater off during the day. I had never heard of such a thing, but why pay to heat water that you aren't using? Makes total sense. In our house the water heater is used to heat the taps, main bathtub, and dishwasher. I turn the water heater on 1hr. before I use it and then it goes off again. This is the customary thing to do over here as you can see by the switch, and so I comply.

10th: Zero storage. I never realised just how hard it would be having zero storage in a bathroom. I am constantly setting things around so that they can "go" somewhere.

11th: Itsy bitsy light fixtures. It's a good thing that this house has a lot of windows, because it has the tiniest light fixtures ever! The light fixtures aren't only small, but they take a whole assortment of different kinds of light bulbs. John and I spent a half an hour standing and staring at the bulbs trying to find which ones were needed for each strange fixture in our home.

12th: Recycling. Is. Huge. They recycle everything here including food scraps. I have never divided, sorted, and broke down more food, paper, and boxes in my life.

13th: Doors to every room. I love that there are doors to every single room in my house. No matter where I am at, if I don't want to be bugged I can close a door. I also love that they all have glass panes so as to provide light into each room...except the bedrooms :) There isn't a big open family room or great room with high ceilings, the rooms are all small and they have doors.

14th: Bring your own bags and bag your own groceries. Here you provide your own bags, this doesn't mean that they wont provide you with plastic bags, it just isn't particularly smiled upon. It takes about 3 of these big blue bags to bag up a weeks worth of groceries for my family. The tricky part is remembering to bring them with me to the store.

As you can see, I have quite a few things to get the hang of. Stepping out the door is a whole different reel of pictures, you should have seen me accidentally driving in the "Bus Only" lane. I will probably get a £120.00 fine for that little "Ooopsie." I was frantically waving my arms about while the bus honked and the police camera's flashed, it was awesome. Okey, more pictures of the actual rooms to come.

Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?

Aaaagh! Ty and Sherri live in Texas. Sherri posted this picture on her blog, and when I saw it I wanted to puke. Can you tell what it is? A SCORPION! There are many things I could handle, but a slimy little critter with its sharp claws and pointy tail....no way. The thing obviously climbed into the light fixture where it died a very warm death. A warm death is sounding pretty good to me right now as I am perpetually cold and damp. But seriously......Aaaagh! When Ty and Sher moved to TX someone told them to buy a rubber mallet for the little buggers and Sherri has already put it to good use. Love ya Sher, but I couldn't do it. I just keep telling myself that there are worse things than rain, mist, fog, and bitter cold.....like slaying scorpions!

Addie Goes to School-British Style

We received a call yesterday afternoon telling us that Adessa had been accepted to a school and that this school just so happened to be our number 1 school choice. Hooray. My worst nightmare was when they said and that she will be starting tomorrow. What! I grabbed Wills up from his nap, loaded the pair of them, and headed for Orpington High Street to the School Uniform shop before it closed. We were able to get her outfitted for school with her Uniform and her P.E. kit which is a pair of navy shorts, black plimsolls, and a red t-shirt (her house colour). The only things that we still need to get are her school bag which is shaped like a briefcase and a cardigan for her. I thought that she would freak out and say that she looked like a boy with her tie on, but she didn't. In fact she said, "I always wanted to look like the girl on Harry Potter!" Thank you Harry Potter.

Just before heading into school. She was totally excited to FINALLY be in school.

Addie and her teacher Mrs. Marchant-Potts

When I asked Addie how she liked school she said that she did, except for this boy who stuck his tongue out at her. I asked what she did about it and she said that she told the teacher. I told her that the boy probably liked her, but she told me that he got "a scolding" because she is the new girl. I am glad that she liked it, because I liked it too.

Vaux What?!

Vauxhall.

We bought a car. Nothing fancy, just something to get us to and fro. It's small, smells like cigarette smoke, but it's an automatic. I am back in cruising around business! I feel comfortable driving this car, much more than the stick shift Ford Fiesta rental. Just thought I would put up some pictures so y'all could see what on earth a Vauxhall looks like.

Knole

I pulled this information about Knole off of Wikipedia- "Knole is an English country house in the town of Sevenoaks in west Kent, surrounded by a 1,000-acre deer park. One of England's largest houses, it is reputed to be a calendar house, having 365 rooms, 52 staircases, 12 entrances and 7 courtyards." We weren't able to tour through it because it is closed until March, but the grounds were worth the 7 mile drive :) This is one of the most amazing places I have been in the sense that there are actual deer that are tame roaming around you. It is a little freaky. The house has a lot of strange superstition surrounding it about people loving it madly and growing to hate it. King Henry VIII made the Archbishop who owned the house give it to him since the King loved it so much. The house definitely has an allurement and was built between 1456-1486.

Willie John enjoying Knole from a different perspective. This seemed to be the only way that we could keep him from trolling about the country side.

This would be Adessa being rebuked by her father for not listening and feeding the deer leaves, which we were asked not to do. This also caused the deer to keep creeping uncomfortably close to us, which Adessa loved. Of course she loved it, she has never seen anyone get pummelled by a deer before! I personally didn't want to be the one attacked and burned into her memory (I couldn't afford the therapy). I also didn't want she or her brother to be charged, I figured John could whip the deers booty ;)

John and I were both crazy in love with this tree and marvelled over how old it must be. I decided that they chose to build the house around the tree.......it is an amazing tree.

I loved this door knocker on the front doors of Knole. Adessa had a hay day knocking away on it, and yes it does in fact work.

I was scared to death by how close this buck kept creeping toward me. I remembered my friends story of Yellowstone where an elk or a moose charged at one of their mom's. Aaaagh, I don't want to have that rack tearing through my flesh! Sooo I kept scooting back as this very hammy and photogenic buck followed me around.

Adessa loves to climb tree's. She was super thrilled that there was a "perfect tree climbing tree" there seemingly just for her. She wasted no time and got right busy climbing away.

William in time-out for pitching a fit where he lost his shoe (we had no idea where) and was now unable to run around. Don't you start feeling bad for him, I already did and let him run around through cold wet mud and deer poop anyway. John wasn't thrilled that I caved, but come on, who wouldn't want to be able to run around this place?

This place is incredibly scenic and has many areas for beautiful walks, strolls, and runs. While we were there we saw loads of family's out for a stroll, runners zipping all over the green hillside, and the occasional person just meandering alone enjoying how beautiful and quiet (with the exception of William's shrill screams) this Estate was.

After Church on Sunday the Nursery leader told us that William has a "Will" about him. She said that when he gets in his mind that he is going to do something or that there is something that he wants, he won't stop until he does or gets it. Hmmmm, where could this little bloke have gotten that from? Weird.

Anya's Amazing Story

This is Anya.

Anya and I met at church and had a great deal in common. It was so comforting to have another friend from Utah to cry with and understand the occasional moments of sadness and homesickness. Anya and Troy spoke in Sacrament meeting a couple of weeks ago where Anya shared bits of her story. I was so moved and touched from what I heard, but that was only the tip of the Iceberg. Teaching Jr. High School for 6 years in West Valley gave me the opportunity to hear a number of amazing stories, but Anya's story is one that we can all gain strength from. Thanks Anya for letting me share this on my blog. Anya and Troy shared their story on the Mormon Channel. I have the link inserted for you to click on http://radio.lds.org/eng/programs/why-i-believe-episode-31 Please take the time to listen to their message, you will be strengthened from their story and testimonies. I. Definitely. Was.

Anya and Troy Patti

Hastings- Tragedy on the Beach

I loved Hastings. Hastings is smaller than Brighton and I liked it significantly better. The beaches here were nice and it wasn't so overwhelmingly populated. That being said, we had a great time showing the kids the "rocky" beach. Adessa was bummed that she couldn't make a sand castle and that she didn't have her swim suit. You will see later on that she quickly learned that it isn't swim suit wearing weather :)

A rocky protrusion.

I love rip curls.

Nice big splashing wave.

These next two pictures are the reason why I would offer to take pictures for people at Westminster Abby on my way to the train. You end up with a dorky portrait of me and then a dorky portrait of John, when you could have a sweet romantic picture of the pair of us together. Instead we look dorky.

We loved the beautiful sun rays breaking through the gloomy grey clouds reflecting their glorious beams on the Ocean.

It took a while to reassure Adessa that she could get nearer the water (William was being shepherded away from the water). Adessa is a very cautious child. I typically love how cautious she is, it keeps her out of trouble, but sometimes a little bit of an adventurous bone is good. She finally mustered the courage and started to loosen up and crept closer to the water.

It doesn't take long for all inhibitions to fly out the window. As soon as they think that everything is fine, they jump full throttle into the adventure. As you can see, she has crept really close to the water..... which is starting to draw back. Those of you who have been to the Ocean know what is coming.

The water is drawing back further and further. I am waiting to see what Dad's plan of action will be, yet I sit silently by waiting to capture the whole tragic event on film. Evil evil mom.

And here it comes. Dad runs like lightening swooping in to save the little fella, but miss Adessa is on her own. I can't sacrifice my camera to the splashes from the wave, so I wait for the wave to hit and then run in to pick Adessa up out of the huge puddle of water and sea foam. The poor dear has been knocked over and is soaked wet.

Horrified, she is shaking like a leaf because she is scared....not cold, yet. Wills is still trying to figure out what happened and John is wet through his shoes and up the backs of his pant legs. I was the smart one who wore knee high leather boots and am perfectly dry.

Still upset. I know it sounds terrible, but I love little kids cry faces. Look how cute she is!

Pulling herself together.

Adessa's Aunty Crazy taught her that when you get knocked down "you get back up on that horse and whip it." She did just that. She lingered on the beach long enough for me to empty the rocks, shells, and water from her soaked wet boots.

Ignore the wrinkles, I am sure that I was pondering something earth shattering at this moment. I don't know just what it was that I was pondering, but I am sure that it was good ;)

I loved just how pure white the sea foam was. Whoever named that funky Crayola crayon shade of green "sea foam" never saw sea foam in Hastings because it is PURE white.

The beaches are all rocky beaches with the exception of a couple where they actually shot all of the war film footage for UK war movies. I liked this shot of the rock poking through the hole of the white shell. Adessa thoroughly enjoyed herself wandering around looking for just the right shells to pocket and bring home.

The water was beautiful. We were able to get enough shells to satisfy Adessa and see enough tumbling waves to satisfy the rest of us. I am sure that in the summer Hastings is far busier than it was on this January day, but I would rather peace and calm over sunny and warm.....today anyway. Tired, cold, and wet we headed for McDonald's drive through and then home.