Winter time in CA

(Written December 2011!)

We're in the park and Tommy is being his usual high spirited self. An older lady walks over and starts cooing over him. 'Oh, what a gorgeous little tow head you are', she says to which T retorts 'I NOT a tow head, YOU a tow head – humph' and stalks off. T seems to have grown up over night. In the last few months he's put his dummy away without so much as a tear and has potty trained himself (neither Ste or I can take credit for that one). He told me the other night 'I don’t need kissing mummy'. Every morning we go to preschool, just before I open the door he turns round so he can moonwalk into the classroom. He asks random people to pull his finger. Sophia too has done her fair share of growing up. She has cemented her friendships with some really girly girls. She's really into her ballet dancing which she performs with her tongue sticking out of mouth in concentration. To my absolute delight she likes listening to Take That and is getting up on Saturday evening to come and watch Strictly come dancing with me. She's really brilliant company, in fact they both are.

So life in general. A British friend living here told me she had been reading my blog and that she thought I was the only person that she knew who really felt the same way as her about being in America, ie homesick. I hadn’t realised how much this came through until I re-read all the entries so far (not quite as many as I had thought I would write originally – maybe my desire to get something published one day will be hampered by the fact I can never find the time / be bothered to sit down and write anything!). As the end of 2011 gets closer it has also made me evaluate the year and think about what a roller coaster it has been. This time last year Ste was getting on a plane for his interview at Broadcom, narrowly making it back to Heathrow before it shut because of the snow. I cannot believe that was a year ago – looking back the year has gone so quickly and whilst it has been full of ups and downs it has certainly not been dull!

Nearly 9 months in and life is, well, normal. Finally. New friends are now established friends. We live in a lovely area where we feel like we are becoming part of a community. People have been so welcoming and we’ve never been short of an invitation or two to do various things. The kids love their school. Ste loves his job. Ste’s found a soccer team to play for and I’ve starting dancing again. I’ve starting doing some volunteer work and have a nice little job set up for the new year running a class for littlies every week. As it requires some planning and preparation time it almost feels like ‘real work’. I even get paid a bit, albeit in shopping vouchers. So, even I, the pessimist, have to admit that the end of the year has been by far my favourite time here. Whilst I do still get sad about what we are missing in the UK , I’m also taking pleasure about all the things we are gaining by being in America.

As life has settled down rather than keeping up the frantic pace of gallivanting we’ve been doing a bit of lolling around the house. We found we’ve missed it a great deal! However as I’ve neglected to write this for ages we’ve also done a fair amount stuff in the past few months. Am going to post some photos as it is my intention to get this blog made into a book (which a friend informs me you can do) either when we go home or when the novelty of being here has worn off. So, here’s what we’ve done.

Halloween

Halloween was an amazingly fun time. The celebration lasts for well over a week and included 4 parties and two lots of trick or treating. The best of the bunch was probably Ste's works party in which we all dressed up. The kids won a 'cute' award but Ste and I won nothing which I though was rather harsh! Still it was a good evening and even though it was an evening party the kids were made so welcome. (One thing I love about being over here is how well the children are treated).

Roaring railroads

We went to roaring railroads with our friends Lorraine and Shay and their two girls Natalie and Hannah. It was a very cold (it was right by the coast) but fantastic experience. T managed to surprise us all by being scared of the trains but journeying through the redwoods was really special. We finished it all off with a two family trip to Dennys.

Disney on Ice

We took the kids to see Disney on Ice (in preparation for the trip to the real thing in Feb) We had to pin T down from running away up the aisles before it started but once it got going in once great fun. Phia favourite was captain hook and Tinkerbell and T loved Mickey.

Petaluma

This was a fabulous child free weekend (thanks mum!) up in wine country. Ste and I stayed in this very un-American little boutique hotel, went out for a beautiful dinner and spent the day tasting wine in a very small vineyard. Hoot and Linda took us through the wine (Hoot couldn't get over the fact we we from Britain, he told us he had never been over the Golden gate bridge which was a few miles down the road!) but they were fun hosts and showed us the workings of the vineyard too. Def sounds like something I could do as long as I didn't have to pick the grapes! It was a gloriously sunny weekend for November time and one that we will definitely to repeating when we get our babysitters back!

Thanksgiving 

Thanksgiving is a huge deal over here – much more so than Christmas. It was funny to watch people squabbling over frozen turkeys in Safeway! We decided to go away as its a real family time and as we had no family over to celebrate with us we thought we'd take advantage of the 4 day holiday. Before we went Sophia's class at school did a lovely performance of thanksgiving songs which was really sweet and even included some old English classics (Love is something if you give it away / magic penny for people that remember or work in a primary school)

Yosemite (by Ste)

Not really understanding what Thanksgiving is all about, we decided to take the four days off work and use them to do something interesting. I was really looking forward to it all the way until we were given a little leaflet warning us of the dangers of bears, snakes and mountain lions. Needless to say, I neglected to mention to Sian any of this in case the trip was abandoned at short notice.

The hotel was really nice actually. When we arrived, we'd driven up to altitude so it was a bit of a surprise when the cold air rushed into the car. There was a massive Christmas tree in the hotel lobby when we got inside which went down very well with S&T. The room was really huuuuge – sometimes hotel rooms can feel a bit cramped but we loved this one. Since there were no Sizzlers or Red Robins within a fifty mile radius, we allowed the kids to choose something from the menu and got it from room service. Tommy couldn't contain his excitement at the thought of someone bringing his mac 'n' cheese to the room. Went down well, anyway: two little people sat by the window stuffing their faces with cheese and pasta while mum and dad decided what they'd have later on.

We drove into the park in the mornings with unbelievable views from the car window. Thousands of feet sheer drop below, giant trees as far as the eye can see, sparkling blue skies above and what did Sophia and Tommy want to do? Yep, watch telly in the back of the car. No end of chocolatey persuasion/blackmail would avert four little eyes from the Wonderpets and Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Oh well, at least we were granted attention walking around the valley to take in the sights.

We thought on the second day (having pottered in the valley on the first day) that we should park up, walk two miles to America's tallest waterfall, then double back for a further mile to see Mirror Lake and then wander back to the car. Surely no stretch for six hours on a lovely, sunny winter's day, right? Wrong. Four hours later, we were nearly at the waterfall. Tommy and Sophia had taken turns gurning for the camera, taking shoulder rides and chasing each other through the bushes. We'd had five hundred toilet stops, Tommy had got thirsty twenty-seven times and Sophia had demanded something to eat on no less than a fifty separate occasions. We did see the waterfall though and impressive it surely was. Sophia and Tommy preferred walking on a little wall on the way back but there's no accounting for taste.

All in all though it was our most favourtie thing we have done so far as a family. Yosemite is fabulous, so much so that a return trip in the summer in currently being booked.

Nutcracker (Sian again!)

Lorraine and I took our girls to see the Nutcracker ballet in December (T stayed at home with daddy doing boys things – this involved sweeping leaves and putting oil in the car!). It was a really special thing to take my lovely girl to the ballet for the first time. It was a bit of a slow burners (all 3 girls demanding to know where the nutcracker was for the first 20 minutes!) but once the man himself showed up and killed the rats (one of Phia's best bits!!) it turned into a really magical affair of princesses and snow. Just lovely.

As I said before we have also done our fair bit of lolling at home. The weather has been absolutely fabulous. Its been around 18-20 Celsius most days with bright sunshine and blue skies to go with it. While it is still cold in the morning and evening as it is winter this is not the rainy season I expected. So much nicer. I'm enjoying it more than the summer weather as its just so different. Our garden has developed into a fantastic fruit fest of oranges and lemons. We invited our Aussie friends Emily and Greg round for dinner, our first mini dinner party of living in this house which was a great evening. It was fab to be able to make a lemon tart with lemons from the garden. Ste has big plans for planting veg this year so next year we should be completely self sufficient (so long as we don't want to eat anything other than oranges, lemons, tomatoes, peppers and herbs!) We've also been doing all the Christmassy thing of putting up trees, creating gingerbread houses and making paper chains. It doesn't feel that Christmassy though!

Rengstorff park in December

Beautiful blue skies

Phia and her friend Margaux at the park

Orange tree in our back garden

Phia and Anna at Annas ballet party

I type this we I am waiting for Ste to come home from his Holiday party which is being held at a go-karting track, much to his delight. We are off to see Santa and the Holiday lights this weekend and then it’s the long plane and proper British Christmas. A great end to the month!