A True Midwestern Girl

Inspired by footage of Madeline's friend Addie enjoying corn on the cob a little while ago, we decided to give Madeline her first crack at it last night, instead of cutting the corn off the cob for her as we'd done in the past. Other than insisting that she have butter on hers, just like Mommy and Daddy did, it was an unqualified success! Once she figured out what she was supposed to do, she thoroughly enjoyed the process, and finished pretty much the whole ear of corn.
It made her Mommy proud--she's clearly got Midwestern blood running through her veins (even if the actual corn was imported from France...)!

Future Gymnast?

We've recently discovered a very fun new place to play. It's a gymnastics studio that opens two mornings a week for play sessions for toddlers. Madeline likes it very much, and so does her Mommy--it's an hour and a half that she doesn't have to be entertaining her, and she gets lots of good exercise! Well worth the money. Unfortunately, Madeline has SO much fun that it's very hard to get good pictures of her there--she's too busy playing to hold still for a picture, let alone smile for one. You'll just have to take my word for it that she's happy in all of these shots!!

Have Kitchen Sink, Will Travel

We have apparently entered the Pack Rat Phase of toddlerhood.

Here's a photo of Madeline, ready to walk to the store today for some quick errands. It's about a ten-minute walk at my pace, though nearly an hour if I let Madeline walk and "explore" along the way. Still, you'd think we were going for the day...



Needless to say, ALL of the things she wanted to bring (insisting, "I carry!") ended up in the stroller within about five minutes. Oh well. It's a good thing the stroller has a big basket underneath!!

Battle Proms

So, I was waiting to post this in the hopes of getting some better pictures from some of my friends, but I'd better just go ahead and make do with what I've got.

Saturday, July 12th, we went to Battle Proms with a bunch of the other ISEs. It was held at Burghley House, which is a stately house in Stamford, not far from Peterborough. For you Pride and Prejudice fans, it was used as the home of Darcy's aunt in the recent movie...



It sort of felt like a 4th of July celebration (there was even a real American flag there, courtesy of some other Americans who happened to be there--see photo below!), although to my knowledge there wasn't any particular national association to this celebration. We had a picnic supper, and there was music, cavalry demonstrations, a Spitfire plane that did some fancy flying, cannons, and of course, fireworks.



I was, admittedly, a bit hesitant to attempt an outing that started at suppertime and wouldn't end until 11pm or so with Madeline. But it went fine--she was actually really pretty good. It helped that she had friends to play with: especially her good friend Addie, and Addie's mom, my friend Corrina.

I didn't get any pictures of the cavalry or the plane (which Madeline LOVED) or the cannons (which she didn't) or the fireworks (which we sort of convinced her to like), but here's some general shots of the fun:

I'm IT!

So, I got "tagged." Nearly a month ago.
But I'm finally fulfilling my responsibilities!!

"I've Been Tagged" Rules: Answer these 8 questions and tag 5 people.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

That would have been the summer after my sophomore year in college.
I was living in California, working as an Environmental Education Intern at a National Wildlife Refuge outside San Francisco. I did field trips and then put together and ran week-long day camps for elementary school aged children. I lived on the refuge in a trailer. It was a great experience!

2. Five things on my to do list?

Catch up on all the emails I haven't replied to
Send a birthday card to my friend Kim
Finish the laundry (now that my washing machine's been fixed!)
Read the book I'm supposed to finish by next Wednesday for book club
Figure out what I'm going to make for supper...

3. Snacks I enjoy?

Ice cream!
Popcorn
Chocolate
Really, just about anything that's not good for you...

4. If I were a Billionaire what would I do?

Hire someone to clean my house for me every week
Get a babysitter just to have some time to myself
Buy my husband his dream car (Porshe 911 Turbo)
Buy us a nice (but not ridiculous) house
Put some aside for children's college tuition and for the future
Find something worthwhile to do with the rest of it

5. Three Bad Habits?

Staying up later than I should
Getting into a book and then not doing the other things I should be doing
Procrastinating (hence the month delay in this posting...)

6. Places I've lived?

Wisconsin
Michigan
California
Utah
Illinois
England

7. Five jobs I've had?

Witch at a pumpkin farm: junior high school
Library Page: high school (yes, that's actually what the name of the job was...)
GIS intern: college
Cartographer: after college
Mother/Homemaker: now

8. Five things many people don't know about me?

I like fantasy books (a lot)
I broke my nose as a kid
I ran track in junior high and high school (but badly)
I played French horn (also not very well)
I love the smell of musty basements

The five people I'm now tagging are:
Angela R.
Cathy D.
Corrina D.
Holli K.
Liz S.

You're IT!!!!!!!

Pigtails!

Here's my darling daughter with her new hairstyle:

I finally got around to actually doing something for her to keep her hair out of her face, and to make her look a little bit more like the cute little "big girl" she is, and less like a wild 'n crazy child. Poor kid: she needs a mama with some knowledge when it comes to hairdos, instead of one who just decided to chop all of her own hair off rather than deal with it! (grin...)

She's even not too bad about sitting (mostly) still and letting me put them in for her--I think she likes her new pigtails. She always wants to "See!" in the mirror once we're done. Males of the species, watch out!!

New Wheels

Well, I seem to be on about a "post-a-month" schedule, here...
Sorry to any of you who are actually checking my blog more frequently than that!

To those of you who don't know me well; I'm not exactly a car buff (unlike my husband). So for me to be actually blogging about a car is somewhat unusual.
And it's not even that the car worthy of this posting is all that special. It's not super-luxurious, or super-fast, or super-rare, or anything like that. It's just that it's so drastically much better than my previous car!

We bought two "new" cars when we moved here to the UK 8 months ago. We got a decent, not very old car for Bill, and then, since we were trying to save some money in the midst of all the spending incident to a move to a new country, we bought a much cheaper, much older, not as nice car for me. We soon learned that cars here depreciate much faster and more drastically than they do in the US. In other words, we'd overpaid for my car. On top of that, it soon showed signs of some potentially big problems.

Bill is very handy with cars and car repairs, and he did some work on it. But they have an extremely thorough annual inspection here in the UK, called MOT. If your car doesn't pass, it's illegal to drive it. We weren't sure my car would pass, which would make it quite literally worthless.
To make a few months of deliberations short; we finally decided to trade it in and get me a newer, nicer, safer, more reliable car. We got less than half of what we'd paid for my old car (only 7 months ago) back, which really stunk, and meant we had to tap into our savings a bit. But here's my new set of wheels:

As you can see, Madeline likes it, too. Even though it's not yellow, which is what she kept reminding us she wanted every time we talked about getting a new car, and even at the car dealerships. "Yellow car! Yellow car!"

It's only a year old, so it's still got two years of warranty on it, and I don't have to worry about it breaking on me in the middle of the road. And the side mirror isn't about to fall off! And it doesn't put out clouds of blue smoke when I start it! And the display lights on the dashboard aren't broken! And I can actually use my seat belt! And there are no cracks in the windshield!

And I am very happy with it. It's enough to (almost) make me like driving over here...