Santa Brought a Tricycle!

Yes, I know it's still 19 days until Christmas. But since we're flying out early next Saturday, we decided to have a mini-Christmas for our family today, with the presents we weren't going to pack along with us on our trip back to the US.
And the biggest of those was...Madeline's first bike! Okay, trike, but still, it was exciting. Thanks to Murphy's Law, the camcorder was inexplicably not working, so all we have are some photos, but that's better than nothing.

The tree (yes, we need to get a star for the top of it)...

The trike...

First sight...

Whee!!...

Hell's Angels, watch out?!?...

And here she is, all ready for her first ride outside. She has a lot of fun making the horn honk, and it's very, very loud. Sigh. At least we bought a trike with a parent handle, since she has yet to learn the finer points of pedaling or steering! All things with time and practice, right?

So, one final funny story about our "Christmas" day: We used Madeline's nap this afternoon to get everything ready (assemble the trike, put the presents out, etc.) since we've told her Santa brings presents while you're asleep. When she woke up, Bill was busy finishing up a project outside, so I told her we had to wait upstairs for Daddy, since Santa had come while she was sleeping. Well, she decided she did NOT want to go downstairs. Eventually I figured out it was because she thought Santa was still down there! So I told her that Santa wasn't there any more: he'd gone bye-bye, but had left the presents for her. Then she was all ready to head down the stairs and check it out. Evidently, while she's all about Santa Claus in the abstract, or in photos, or TV, she is not so sure about hanging out with him in her house, face-to-face!

A New Way to Get Clean

Yes, that is my child trying to climb into the washing machine. I have absolutely no idea what prompted her to do so, but then, she's been full of strange and unpredictable ideas lately (i.e. "Let's smear large quantities of lip balm all over the pictures in my room while Mommy's cleaning the bathrooms").

Thankfully, although she really was trying awfully hard, she's just too big to actually fit into the drum, let alone get the door shut behind her, so I was able to simply stand back, watch, snap a few photos, and have a good laugh!

Family Outing

Bill decided to take the day after Thanksgiving off, since he had one day of vacation left over, and would lose it if he didn't use it. I planned to use that weekend to get him to get all the Christmas decorations and the Christmas tree, etc. down from the area above the garage so I could decorate. He found a new and creative way to side-step "honey-do" lists: propose a family outing instead!
We drove a little over two hours to the area of Stoke-on-Trent, where there is a hotel with a water park inside it. The hotel is part of Alton Towers, which is an amusement park here in England.
Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the weekend, as photography was not allowed inside the water park, and there didn't seem much point in taking a picture just of our hotel room. Sorry!
We had a very good time, though--Madeline loves the water just as much as her daddy does, so she got to do lots of "swimming". She really has no fear at all, so we were grateful for the lifejacket-type vests they make for kids these days! The kiddie water slide in particular was a big hit. My only complaint was that they didn't have the place heated quite as much as I would have liked, so we had to stop to warm up a little too often. But it was still a fun weekend. And Bill and Madeline humored me by letting me have a few hours on the way home to stop at Spode and Wedgwood for a little browsing!
Oh, and we did still get the Christmas decorations down that weekend after we got home, so I guess Bill's little trick didn't work after all...

Thanksgiving, a Little Early...

Today was our annual ISE Thanksgiving dinner. It was SO different for me than last year's! Last year, we'd been here for all of two weeks or so. I knew almost no one. We didn't have any of our stuff (our shipment hadn't arrived yet). I was so homesick, and so overwhelmed, and it was so hard listening to everyone talking about how they were all going home for Christmas, when I knew I wouldn't be going home for over a year.
This year, I knew nearly all of the people there, and many of them are good friends. We're about as settled into this country as we're going to get, and I'm leaving to go back home for Christmas in three weeks! Needless to say, it was much more relaxed and much more fun for me than last year.
So, I am thankful for: the new friends I've made in the past year. Having our own furniture, etc. and not having had to pay to get it here ourselves! The opportunity to go home and see our families soon. Being used to living in England, even if I do still like the USA better. :-) And, of course, all of the other blessings we have, even if I am too lazy to type them all in here.
I didn't take many pictures, but here are a few to give an idea of just how many of us there are--I think they said there were about 130 people there today.




I know it looks like Bill's glaring at me for taking a picture, but really, he's not! Those are our friends, the Dobberfuhls, across the table from us--Lana, thanks for smiling so it looks like someone, at least, wanted this picture taken...

And this last picture was taken/made by one of our ISE friends whose hobby is photography. Thanks, Laurie! If you click on it to enlarge it, I think you'll find it's pretty easy to find Madeline...

Trick-or-Treat

Here's our fairy princess all dressed up and ready to go trick-or-treating!
Halloween isn't quite as big here as it is in the States, but our friends and fellow ISEs Corrina and Kevin had invited a bunch of us over to a party and some trick-or-treating in their neighborhood, since they knew their neighbors would be handing out candy.
Bill and I had really talked Halloween up to Madeline in an attempt to prepare her for the new experience, especially as she REALLY doesn't like masks and most costumes on other people. So she was super excited to get to "Corrina's house" and go "trick-or-treat"ing to get "candy"!
Murphy's law, naturally, came into force. The drive that should have taken about 15 minutes took us well over an hour, because there was an accident on the road, so we just sat there at a dead stop for a long, long time. Made even longer by having a frustrated two-year-old in the back seat, who didn't understand why Mommy wasn't taking her to the party like she'd promised! By the time we finally got there (and met Bill, who'd just gone straight there after work), the rest of the party had pretty much finished trick-or-treating.
Luckily, it was Madeline's first time truly taking part in Halloween, so she didn't really have any expectations. So Bill and I took her around to about 5 or 6 houses by ourselves, and she didn't know that she'd missed anything!
So all's well that ends well, and we had a great time at the party. Thanks to Corrina and Kevin, for throwing a terrific bash! Sorry I don't have any pictures of the actual event--I was a bit frazzled when we finally arrived, and forgot to get the camera out of the car...

Our Lil' Punkin

Well, thankfully the British equivalent of Wal-Mart (Tesco) did indeed have pumpkins.

Although I have since learned that the pumpkin festival we went to actually DID have pumpkins for sale. They were just in a really hard-to-find location and there were no signs anywhere to tell you about them. If we had managed to find them though, and bought pumpkins, we could have gotten free entry to the farm, which would have saved us money. Sigh. But I digress...

On Saturday we initiated Madeline into the joy that is pumpkin carving. Daddy helped Madeline with her pumpkin while Mommy did the other one. Needless to say, Daddy and Madeline's pumpkin turned out best. Madeline even helped design the face for her pumpkin: Bill drew several sets of eyes, noses, and mouths, and let her pick the ones she liked best. She wasn't super sure about helping to pull out the seeds, etc. at first, but it didn't take her too long to get into it. We've put our pumpkins outside on the wall by our driveway, and we have lots of fun waving to them every time we go by. Thankfully no one's smashed them yet--I don't want to have to try to explain that to Madeline if it happens. She's rather fond of her pumpkin, as evidenced by the photo of her kissing it!

"Pumpkin" Festival

I must really have bad karma when it comes to food-themed festivals. It's getting to be something of a family joke.
It all started with the infamous "Cherry Festival" right after we moved to Illinois. There was not a single cherry in sight. All it was was a really cheap carnival.
Today the trend continued. As a big fan of Halloween, specifically the beautiful fall colors and pumpkin farms, I was excited to see that a local farm was having a "Pumpkin Festival" today. I promptly put it on the calendar and informed Bill that he was taking Madeline and I to it. I told Madeline we were going to a farm to get her a pumpkin. She was really excited, and talked about getting a "pumpkin for Madeline" the whole way there. Never make promises to a toddler if you don't have total control over the outcome...
It wasn't quite as bad as the Cherry Festival. There were a few, small pumpkins. They had a pumpkin sling shot, and at specific times (none while we were there) they had pumpkin carving. But we did not see a single pumpkin for sale ANYWHERE.
Now, it wasn't a total waste of time and money--Madeline actually did have fun seeing, holding, and feeding all the animals. And there was play equipment. And the weather was great. All told, we spent about two hours there, in fact.
But we came home without a pumpkin for Madeline.
I told her I'd buy her one at the grocery store. Sigh.