Jane Austen

Jill to George "You might like Mansfield Park. It is on the TV. You can watch half and hour of it, and if you like it you can read the book."

Christian "It's a bit girlie"

Ollie "Is it all about make-up?"

House

We bought the house we were renting. At the end of last year the housing market, in St.Albans anyway, was going a little bonkers. Decent houses were being bought for way above asking price. We were lined up to buy a house, ready to exchange, when the sellers dropped out.

Then our landlords gave us notice that they were going to put the house on the market. We decided to buy it, offering a bid to take it off the market. That worked, and we exchanged late last year. I'm not sure I have posted on this, nor uploaded any pictures of the house yet, even when we were renting it. So here is one, albeit of the back.

Garden makeover

This is what our garden looked like not long after we decided to rip it up.

And this is what it looks like now:

We had a tree removed, the lawn flattened, and new glass put down. Oh, and we had the sun come out for the picture. Don't think that our little arch has half a door on it. I have just noticed that it is the chalet door opened so it looks like the arch has half a door! And if you look carefully, you can see the bounce-a-lene behind the trellis.

New Couch

Okay, so we have had this couch a while now, but I haven't posted for a few weeks. So some catching up posts to do. This corner used to be where the our desk was - it was butted up against the wall that you can't quite see on the left of the pic above. This corner sofa was from IKEA. We thought it would be horrible to assemble. It was pretty easy and the whole thing must have taken no more than 90 minutes to get up, and most of that was getting the covers pulled taut over the frame and cushions.

Fleetville School Fete

A regular feature all over Britain are school summer fetes. Today was Ollie's school. There was some BMXing, some nice dancing by pupils and all manner of catching things, throwing things, kicking things and lots of food, including sweets, BBQ, and of course the scones stall:

George also did his bit, by helping out at the penalty shoot out:

Christmas Day

Our Christmas Day was in two parts. The first part was at home, with the kids opening their presents. The Clone Trooper outfit and helmet went down very well. The second part of the day was at Jill's parents in Surry. Bob and Sally, and the kids were also there. We did all the things one should do at Christmas; ate too much, opened lots of great presents, watched Wallis and Gromit, ate too much again, and then slumped.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is when the Danish side of the family celebrate Christmas. When I was a kid these family gatherings were pretty big, especially for a little kid, and very exciting, as it was when I got the best presents, the ones from your mum and dad. As a result Christmas Day was pretty boring. None of my friends were allowed out, as they were having their Christmases, and I was done with mine.

Anna and I make sure we still have our families get together on Christmas Eve, and we still open a few presents but the main emphasis of Christmas is no longer on Christmas Eve. And with Dad no longer around it is ever more the case.

This year we hosted Christmas Eve. It would be a change for Anna, we might not miss Dad so much and besides it was definitely our turn. The highlight of the evening was getting some of Dad's old 35 mm slides out. We got his old screen up, and the projector, it must be 40 years old at least, was still working. My Dad hadn't got the whole thing set up since we were kids so it was a little like going in back in time. We saw lots of old favourites, and quite a few pictures we had never seen before, like the pictures of us both as tiny babies.

Unfortunately, I was so engrossed in looking at my Dad's pictures, I didn't take any of my own.

Evening Reading

Everything at Once

This week was the BIG arrival week. Hot on the heels of the car (last Friday), the container's worth of belongings arrived (it had been six weeks) and British Telecom (BT) send us 'The Hub' that enables us to get online. It feels like we have been starved since we arrived, and now been given a massive meal we can't possibly eat in one sitting. This is going to take a while to get up and runnning.

We Have a Car

A nice green Peugot 307 Estate (station wagon). It is one of the few estate cars into which a third line of seats can go, which is just the ticket for us as we will need to move the occasional 6th and even 7th person around. Our boys are still pretty small, so they can get in. In a few years time it may be a different story, but then again they may not be interested in traveling with us anyway.

Alick and Gillian's 40th Anniversary

Last weekend was Alick and Gillian's 40th anniversary. That is 14600 days, not including leap years! The family party was lovely. The bad weather turned good as the party started and turned bad just as it ended. It was particularly opportune timing for us as we could prove to the Barnett side of the family that we have actually returned.

Arrival in UK

Yesterday, I landed in UK. The flight was delayed, I slept 30 mins, and it was cold and overcast when I emerged from the airport. The temperature in NY the day I left was about 90F, when I landed it was mid 60s F.

We are living in St Albans, to begin with we will rent again. We have a nice semi-detached that I had the briefest of looks around when I was here with George in June. It is not perfect but it does have a big family space and four bedrooms, and it close to town, schools, train station and park.

The Address: 10 Flora Grove, St. Albans, Herts, AL1 5ET.

The 500lb Game

Imagine a game where you have to select 500lb of your belongings that you can live on for 6 weeks in a new country before the rest of your belongings arrive. Imagine you are selecting for a family of five and you don't know how much 500lbs is. Do you take pcs, beds, clothes, kitchen utensils, toys, papers, important papers? The weekend was spent deciding what goes in the 500lb shipment (takes a week, by air) and what goes in the container 6-8 week shipment. There is also the question of what goes in our cases just to complicate things.

After the packing men have gone, all that is left is what we are going to take with us on the flight or what we are going to discard or hand off to others in Chappaqua. Luckily, we have found a home for the TV, DVD, phone and the car! It still means that house looks a little empty:

We decided to head off for a few days rather than hang around.

Goodbye Party

The McGraths hosted a goodbye party for us. It is typical of their wonderfully generous spirit. We had guests from Douglas, Spring and Begg. It couldn't have been much better; the weather was gorgeous, kids playing in the pool, a warm, open and friendly group of people all keen to mix in and a great barbequeue. America may not be able to do country pubs; the UK can't do this. We shall miss it.

Ryan White

We picked up Ryan White yesterday. Ryan is Giles and Sarah's eldest son. He has come over for a week of work experience with me. He told me that other pupil's work experience isn't quite the same as this! Ryan is going to make some posts whilst he is here.

Squirrels on my Lawn

Ok, I hear you saying, "it's a lawn with pock marks, so what?" You forget; we live in pretty dense woodland and we have many many squirrels hereabouts. And we have had a particularly warm spell this week; it went from zero degrees Fahrenhait to sixty within day or two. Put those two things together and you get a seriously chewed up lawn as the squirrels emerge to try to recall where they buried their stash in The Fall, grab a quick bite to eat and chase each other up and down the trees before returning to their nests before temperatures plumment back to freezing. This they have now done. Last night's frost has solidified the squirrel's pock pattern, and tonight we expecting a pretty big dump of snow; 4-6". The good thing is that the lawn will be covered for a fair stretch now.