A little Christmas in England!

 Well, things aren't quite put away in the house, but I just had to get that Christmas Tree up!  It was fun to have some familiarity in the mess of it all.  I will say, I became awful sad when I opened up our 1 and only box of christmas stuff that we brought and realized it wasn't much!  But it was fun decorating with what we had and maybe my sweet hubby will let me do just a smudge of shopping.

My sweet girls

Getting those ornaments hung!

And there she is, quite a beauty!

My Momma made these ornaments the christmas before I was born.  I just love them!

She also had a set of little wooden toy ornaments that are just precious that are on our tree this year.

The kids snuck, Buddy, our elf in on the tree!

And I had picked up a pack of these gold snowflakes to hang in a window one year but they have added a nice addition to our tree this year!

Buddy left the kids a surprise of Cheerios when they woke up this morning!

What a Day!

The title say's it all!  We got in sooooo late last night at our rental apartment after our detour in Oxford and we were trying to get everything packed up to finally move into our house today!  The movers were supposed to be meeting us either late morning or mid-day at the earliest and we received a phone call at 8:30 (I was sopping wet out of the shower) that they were their waiting on us!  So we quickly got everyone dressed and stuff loaded into the car so we can head down the 30-45 minute drive.  We did make one quick stop, Aldi's!  I had been wanting to stop and take a picture in front of Aldi's for my cousin Vicki.  She loves this store and I was pretty surprised to see one over here.  So anyways back on the road again, then stop for gas and then finally on the way to the house!

So here she is, isn't she beautiful.  Well actually, this, I think was the original entrance into the hotel, and our apartment is on the other side, well just to the right of this picture.  It used to be a hotel until 1999 when it was converted into 13 apartments.  Now I will say that our apartment is 2,300 square feet!  Bigger than our house in N.C., but the down fall is there is NO STORAGE!  No garage, no shed, no large closet for all of those baby items that we have stored or bins of holiday stuff or any place for ALL of Robert's work gear or the kids bicycles or the lawn mower that we brought thinking we might need it!  But she is quite a beauty none the less!

And, tada, this is our view, just breathtaking.  I just might learn to live without storage space!

The apartment that we are in is called "Oscar Wilde."  They don't use street numbers over here, just each individual apartment or house has a name.  It is called this because he stayed in what is our present day living room.  He's a pretty big to do around this area because of his stay and just like Adrewsonians latch on to Jumpy Gather's and Chubby Checker, the people of Babbacombe (the part of town we live in) have held strong onto Mr. Oscar Wilde.  Anyways, it is super neat to be living in such a place of history!

So we get to the ice block of an apartment (no heat running in this old place for months!)  and the movers were there waiting on us.  Boy they are fast.  They had the whole house unloaded in just a few hours!  And then they helped unpack everything in just another few hours!  This was  all while they had to park the moving truck a few miles away and bring a sprinter van with smaller loads because they couldn't get the big truck down the narrow streets!  So we are finally all moved in.  I'm sure it will be awhile before we are all settled but it is nice to be HOME!

So, did I mention that today is Thanksgiving!  Well for all you U.S. folks it is!  Not exactly how I had originally intended upon celebrating this day, but in a way, it is kind of fitting.  We are so extremely thankful for being in our home and having a place to finally call home with stuff in it.  Our stuff left our house in N.C. on October 1st!  It has been two months since we have seen most of our stuff and had the comfort of our own home!  

Today I am also choosing to be grateful for a Daddy that was the best I could have ever asked for.  Oh how these last 5 years have been lonely without someone to tease me or to spur me on, encouraging me to make the right choice even if it wasn't the easy one and teaching me so many valuable lessons in life.  

So to all of you in the U.S., HAPPY THANKSGIVING and hoping that you have much to be thankful for!

Oxford

We had a very unexpected detour in down-town Oxford on our way home from Croughton.  We were exhausted, and completely at our wits end, but we somehow still managed to have quite an enjoyable visit for a few hours.  We drove down by the college which was beautiful and then parked downtown.  Robert had went to go do and errand (such a long story) and the kids and I were sitting in a car park waiting on him to get back.  Emma Ann, of course, decides that she must go potty right at that moment.    So I get the kids all ready, no one had on shoes, meanwhile begging Emma Ann not to go potty in her pants, walk up two flights of stairs out of the car park and then find a restroom.  More exhaustion.  That could possibly be part of the reason why I ended up leaving my wallet in the bathroom.  I didn't know it  though until we had gotten all the way home, some 3 hours away!  Anyways, after the potty break, the kids and I walked downtown until we found Robert and then we found somewhere to eat.

The city was quite beautiful.  These pictures don't do it justice.  I had left my camera in the car and was using my phone.

We came upon one of Jamie Oliver's restaurants and wanted to eat there, but there was going to be a little bit of a wait so we decided to go find somewhere else, it was already so late and we still had quite a bit of a drive ahead of us.

We found another great little italian restaurant and the food was AMAZING!  

We couldn't have had a better experience.

This one was actually taken from the car window as we were driving.  But it was just so beautiful.

So then off for home, only 3 hours away and cranky, tired kids!

Did I mention that we were moving into our house the next morning!

CRAZY!

Bowling Fun!

We had to go up to Coughton Air Force Base for a few days to take care of a bunch of paperwork and for me to take my driving test.  SCARY!  I wasn't sure if I could pass a driving test back in the states again, much less in England with all kinds of new rules and codes and signs, but I DID!  I am the official recipient of a U.K. driver's license!  The base isn't very large.  It has a little food court with a Sub-Way and a chicken place in it and the only other place to eat on base is in the bowling alley!  So that is where we found ourselves, a lot!  The kids of course loved it!  It had been sometime since Ethan Jay had bowled and I'm not sure if Emma Ann had ever bowled and I know that Evie Kaye had not, so they were all pretty excited!  By the way, I will not take responsibility for Evie Kaye's outfit, that was all Robert!  Anyways, we had a great time except that I as usual do not have the bowling thumb!  I had a lower score than the kids!  They did cheat though, they had the bumpers up!  

Evie Kaye had the hardest time being able to reach to get the ball all the way over, but she was so determined and of course wanted NO HELP!  Ethan Jay and Emma Ann were so cute with her though.  They would take turns getting her ball and bringing it over and placing it up for her.  So sweet seeing them work together!

Ethan Jay lining it up.

Sweet Emma Ann, the ball is not even off of the stand yet and she was already cheering for herself!  She was so cute.  She got so excited each and every time!

Doing a little dance that she had hit some pins over!

And another satisfied customer!

Yep, she got some down!

Father and Son

Ethan Jay deciding that he didn't need the assistance anymore!

It was funny though, he kept sliding on his knees like he was sliding into home plate.  He was hilarious!

Those are some stylish shoes Robert has on!

What a kid!  He cracks me up!

I think I would pull a muscle if I did that!

Downtown Exeter

Exeter has a great little shopping area that is just within a block or so of where we are staying and there are the greatest shops.  It's like one of those really big outdoor shopping malls like the Town Square Center in Mt. Pleasant.  They have every shop and restaurant all lined up down one street along with a great movie theatre and the Cathedral is there as well.  We have enjoyed several strolls along it and the kids even enjoyed some rides today.  The girls were on a Merry-go-Round while I was Ethan Jay on this gigantic slide so I didn't get any pictures of them, but they had a blast!  

Ethan Jay loved his ride too!  He had to climb all the way to the top and slide down all by himself.  Not a problem for him, as usual.  He is a little dare devil! He was only supposed to go down 3 times but the guy kept letting him go.  I had prepped him for only 3 so it was so cute when he kept telling the guy that he had already been down all of his times!

We found a really cool chinese buffet for lunch.

It was the largest Chinese buffet that I have ever seen.  There was so much to choose from and quite a bit of it was new to me.  Very yummy and the kids enjoyed all of it to, including the wishing pond!

The Exeter Cathedral

 We had been hearing about how great the Cathedral was and it was only a few blocks away so we checked it out.  It was beautiful and it was nice to spend a day inside out of the cold!  I couldn't believe how huge it was.  It just kept going and going!  

A few pics of the area

This dress shop is right next door to our apartment and Emma Ann is in love.  She stands in front everyday sometimes more than once admiring all of the princess dresses!

This shop is just across the street and it is actually a bridal dress shop and it has the strangest sign on it.  It say's "The building that Moved."  I have wanted to go in and ask, but haven't, but thought it was quite interesting!

Their Royal Mail Post boxes

I went into a charity shop, what they call thrift stores.  Their are loads of them here.  Good for me, I love them!  When I came out this is what I found.  The kids were having a blast running round and round the bench.  Of course as mothers do I said, "Honey, do you think that is such a great idea, I can just see one of them falling right now and cracking their head wide open?"  

Do you know what happened right after this picture, yep, Emma Ann fell and cracked her head wide open.  Well, maybe not all the way open, just a little goose egg.  But, I'm with Rapunzel's Fake Mom, "Mother Knows Best!"  It's hilarious, because Emma Ann runs around the house singing that song, and  of course I just love it, I just soak it all in!