Perfect time of year for an Anniversary

We had so much fun for our Anniversary. We went to the Manchester Christmas markets. I didn't know anything about them except that everyone we've met says "Oh, you have to go to the Christmas Markets".

It was fun to see the city all decorated and lit up. The town square is transformed into a little conglomerate European village market. All the vendors are set up in a their own cabin selling European trinkets, toys, chocolates, cheeses, marionettes, nutcrackers, and all sorts of other things. It's very cold outside but the markets are warmed with crowds of people and wonderful scents that fill the air as you walk around. We went in the day with Zoe and then again in the evening on our way to dinner. For lunch we shared some bratwurst. I didn't think I'd like it much, because I thought it would be kind of like a hot dog or a polish sausage. But it was so much better and instead of a regular bun, it was served in this warm crusty bread. It was delicious. On the way home that evening we stopped for some hot chocolate, which I must say is possibly some of the best hot chocolate I've ever had.

For dinner we went to this amazing little place that was built in the 1550's called The Old Wellington Inn. It's an old Tudor style building, three stories high with old glass windows. I have desperately wanted to go there from the moment I first laid eyes on the exterior of the building. I must say now that I've finally gone, it was better than I ever expected. Wow, if only I could bottle that kind of ambiance. We will definitely be taking anyone who visits us to this place. We ordered Gammon and a "Toad in the Hole" which is sausage in a Yorkshire pudding. Both dishes were very tasty. After dinner we spent an hour enjoying the unusual opportunity to just sit and talk and enjoy each other as we absorbed the atmosphere. It was wonderful.

Afterwards we walked across the street to go up in the Manchester Wheel. Which is pretty much a fancy Ferris wheel. You ride in enclosed capsules up to the top for an amazing view of the city.

I know it's only been four years, but this year's Anniversary takes the cake for best and most memorable celebration. We had such a nice time.

I went online and found a picture of the Wellington. Behind it you can see the tail end of the Manchester Cathedral.


While I was at it I decided to see if I could find some pictures of the markets, so here you go.

Ecstatic

I am so stinkin happy! It is my 4 year Anniversary tomorrow. Brent is taking the day off from studying and we are going out with Zoe during the day. Then we are coming home, feeding and putting our child to bed and a babysitter is coming over! We have had a lot of fun exploring the city with our daughter, but being two years old she can be, well, shall we say temperamental? Maybe loose cannon or ticking time bomb would be more appropriate. We love our daughter, but tomorrow will be our first time going out without her since we've been here. I am very excited!

The other fabulous thing that has happened is I have discovered a grocery delivery service! I am ecstatic! Do you know what this means? It means no more nightmare shopping trips! It means no more trying to fit a weeks worth of groceries into one measly hand basket. It means no more worrying about whether or not I bundled up my daughter enough to keep her warm during our walk to the store in the increasingly cold, humid weather. It means no more frazzled shopping where I can't even think about what I'm buying. It means no more two year old wiggling out of her buckle and insisting on standing up and attempting to tip the stroller back because she thinks it's funny. It means no more having to invent new and creative ways to get my daughter to not reach back into the hand basket (which is unavoidably accessible to her) and picking things out one by one and throwing them on the floor. It means so much more, but most importantly it means keeping my sanity at least one more day of the week!

Conversational Skills

My daughter LOVES to talk. She loves to have conversations like mommy and papa do, but she doesn't really know how. Oh, she can talk, but it's just carrying on a conversation that she hasn't quite got down yet. When we are out and about and someone starts talking to her it goes a little something like this;

"What's your name?"
"Name Mommy" as she points to me
"How old are you?"
"Cute dress. Likem Dress?"
"Oh yes, it's lovely"

Then she begins introducing random items of interest.
"It's my purse. It's my chair. It's my door."

She may at this point also begin talking about the invisible tigers that seem to follow us where ever we go or just continue on to speak in a cute little gibberish language which is apparently her impression of what we sound like.

Because of her limited conversation skills, she has begun taking all sorts of phrases from the books and movies she likes and using them in regular conversation. I know this is not an uncommon thing, but it is new to me and I can't stop laughing at some of the things she's been saying and doing lately. What gets me most is how she whips out these lines and fits them perfectly into what's happening at the moment. Below are a few examples.

-From "Shrek II", whenever she's angry at us or doesn't like what we have to say, she looks at us and say "Ogre! RAAAAAAAAR!" Somehow expecting to intimidate us. Some times when she is really upset and is crying really hard, she still tries this but it sounds more like "Og-u-u-u-re, Raa-u-u-u-u-ar! We try not to laugh at her because she's clearly very upset, but it's hard because she's so serious about it.

-This one is from "Aladdin" where princess Jasmine is complaining about not having a life of her own and never even leaving the palace. The other day, Zoe wanted to go outside to play while we were in the middle of dinner. I said no. First she screamed at me and then started obviously fake crying. Then she decided to try something new and in an instant stopped everything and with a flash of anger in her eyes yelled "Never leave-a Palace!"

-This one is also from "Aladdin" after the magic carpet ride when they are watching fireworks Jasmine says "It's all so magical" Zariah and I were walking home from the park while the sun was setting. I stopped and pointed it out to her and she sighed and said "So magical mommy, so magical."

-We were walking somewhere and one of her shoes fell off. She started making a bit of a commotion, but that was nothing new and I was busy talking to Brent. Finally she said, "Mommy! I lost a glass slipper!".(Cinderella of course)

-I was chasing her at the park one day and she started saying between giggles "Run- Run-Run-can't-catch-me" Thats about all she got out.(Gingerbread man)

-On the swings she started shouting "I can fly, I can fly!".(Peter Pan)

It is funniest when she uses these lines injected into our conversations, but sometimes she just runs around the house spouting off different things. Like "Oh no, it's a BIRD!" (Bugs Life) or "Slow down tinker bell, slow down!" Also because she is as girly as they come, she likes to sing. She twirls around the room singing softly and sweetly and then we cover our ears as she ends on a very princess fiona-like shriek because she thinks that is how princesses sing. She is always coming up with something new and it is a hoot!

A Day in York

Today we spent the day in York. It was so nice to just hang out and explore a new city. We haven't taken very many pictures during the time we've been here in England, so this morning I decided I was going to take pictures of everything. Of course the battery died after the first few hours. These are the few pictures we got.

Our first stop was at York Minster, the largest Medieval Cathedral in Northern Europe. It was amazing inside and 10 times bigger than it seems in this picture.

Next we went to Jorvik which is an archaeological dig site of the viking city of Jorvik about a thousand years ago. Apparently the continuously damp soil preserved the wooden buildings along with bugs and even dead leaves perfectly. Accompanying the site they made this fun, very Disneyland like ride through a recreation of what they've found in the dig. Even the faces on the mannequins were created by computerized regeneration of faces from the skulls they found in the dig. Bet you can't guess what this particular mannequin is doing.


Then we went to Clifford Tower, the remains of a protective castle and moat originally built by William the Conqueror. While we were out front emptying and folding the stroller, Zoe was playing at the base of the steps. Four Asian girls came down the steps and got really excited when they saw Zoe, they started taking pictures of her. I thought it was sweet. Then they started having each of their pictures taken with her like she was a celebrity or a character at Disneyland! One by one, they all traded off so they could have their picture taken with her. It was so bizzare. I was so happy I had whipped out my camera in time to take this shot.

I really wish I knew why. I've got a few suspicions, but I guess I will probably never really know.

There were so many other things I wish I could have taken pictures of. Someone was fiddling beautifully in the town square for money. The main shopping area is so old, the streets are too small to allow cars. The buildings were so cool too, it reminded me of shopping in Harry Potter's Diagon Alley.

Oh yeah, and one of the best parts of the whole day? Zoe stayed in the same dry diaper all day until the bus ride home when there was no way we could get her to a bathroom. But she told me every time she had to go, we found a bathroom and she went!!!!! This is a definite first, it's the longest she's ever stayed in the same diaper. Cross your fingers for me that she will keep this up!

Banks with no Money

We bought a washing machine!!! It arrived today and I am so thrilled! Illegal outlets have definitely not been the only annoying thing to get used to around here. Doing coin laundry has definitely been the worst. Now we've never owned a washing machine, so we've been doing coin laundry for quite some time and it's always been annoying, but here in England there is an added element of annoyance.

In the US, we just went to the bank and asked for a roll of quarters, no big deal. Here, in order to do one load of laundry you need a one pound coin and five 20 pence coins. We can get one pound coins pretty easy especially since we only need one per load. The 20p coins are a totally different story. When we first moved in we had quite a bit of laundry to do from traveling and staying in hotels. I asked Brent to go to the bank to pick up a roll of 20p coins. He came back that day empty handed. I asked him if he forgot and he said "no, they didn't have any".

"They didn't have any?" I asked in disbelief.
"Well, the guy said he didn't have any he could spare."

He didn't have any he could spare??? Brent was a customer at a bank asking to withdraw a certain form of money, not a bum on the street asking for cigarettes! It's a BANK! Money is their specialty isn't it? I figured that Brent just talked to the wrong person and he was too shy to press the matter. I got some coins at a local market to hold us over until Brent could go back and ask again.

Brent did go back and ask again and again and got the same response. We were dumbfounded. Where do you go to get coins for laundry, if you can't get them from the bank? I started to wonder if we were running into a cultural difference. Like maybe there is a special place at the post office or grocery store that you can go to specifically for coins and we just didn't know about it yet. I started asking around, but everyone I talked to just told me to get them from the Bank. Ugghh!

Meanwhile, I continued to ask at the local market for change in 20p coins to get us by on washing the bare essentials. Finally one day when I asked for extra 20p coins in my change, the clerk said "You need 20p coins?? I need 20p coins!" I was shocked and told him that I understood if he was short on them, I was just asking, it wasn't a big deal. Obviously getting coins from the local market was no longer an option.

Where everyone gets their 20p coins around here remains an unsolved mystery. I'll let you know if I ever find out. So we bought a washing machine, not only to bypass the absurd ordeal that it was to find coins, but also to save money. What we were spending on coin laundry should pay off our washing machine in 3-5 months.




Okay, I know I'm getting nerdy about this with not one but two pictures of our new beloved washing machine. I only put up two so you can see the rest of the kitchen with our weird mini Hob(oven) and mini fridge. I don't know about the Hob, but the mini fridge is really common, in fact milk is put in jugs specifically made to fit in the doors of these fridges. It's been an adjustment, but back to the washing machine. They only have front loading models here, oh yeah and it's in the kitchen! I forgot how shocked I was to see the washers and dryers in the kitchen. Yea! We've had a huge mound of laundry in the corner of our bedroom for the last two months because we couldn't get caught up! I've never been so excited to do laundry in my life!

Illegal Outlets

Here in Great Britian, it is illegal to have an outlet in the bathroom. I think it may have something to do with the higher voltage they use. Being female, I found that as a bit of a shock. I am very accustomed to doing my hair in the bathroom. Oh well, so I took my hair styling tools into the bedroom. Just one problem, no mirror. So for the past two months, as I have been getting used to the affect that the change in humidity and weather has had on my hair, I have also been doing my hair without a mirror. Well Sort of. As I blow dry and style my hair, I make a trip to the mirror in the bathroom, pick out the area that needs attention and then holding that area, walk back to the bedroom and blindly do what I think needs to be done, getting it right about half the time. Not the most efficient way I've ever done my hair.

We were finally able to find a mirror to put up in the bedroom a few days ago. We brought it home and set it up against the wall. Zariah couldn't get enough of dancing in front of it and talking to herself in it. She was getting a little rough with it and smudging it up all over, so we asked her to stop and took her in the other room to play, but every chance she had, we found her back in our room kissing herself in the mirror! It's been a few days and I've given up on the smudges. She still kisses herself every chance she gets