Christmas Already?!

Believe it or not when we were in the UK we missed Coshocton's Christmas parade ... yes really!! It was on Saturday November 19th ... for some reason always the Saturday before Thanksgiving, nowhere near Christmas.

Over the last two years we have learnt that the majority of people seem to put their Christmas decorations up over the Thanksgiving weekend or shortly afterwards. As we were all feeling groggy and still getting back into the groove after our trip to the UK, we embraced this 'tradition' and last Saturday got out all of our Christmas decorations and got busy in the house.

We had great fun and for the first year Abigail was really involved in it all ... in fact every day since, she has spent time rearranging the ornaments. Naomi, for whom all things Christmassy is a completely new experience, looked on with a smile on her face!

Here are the finished decorations, at least for the next 5 minutes until Abigail moves something else around! There's a real cosy feel in our house now ... even if it's not even December 1st until tomorrow!

Having done inside the house on Saturday, we put some decorations up on the front porch on Sunday .. another very American thing which we thought we'd do while we're here! As it was a cold and miserable day, Jenny and Abigail embraced yet another cultural tradition that afternoon, one which Abigail had enjoyed with Amy last year, decorating a gingerbread house.

So while it may seem a little early ... Christmas has well and truly arrived in our home and we're loving every minute of it!

An Eventful Time in the UK

As organised as you can try and be, nothing ever works out quite as planned. We spent almost a month back in the UK with a very full schedule in the diary ... but 24 hours after we arrived in the country we knew it wasn't going to work out as we had expected.

Jenny's nan passed away the morning after we landed in England. She had been really ill the previous couple of weeks and we were able to visit her the morning we arrived. It was great we were able to see her and felt the timing was perfect in many ways as we were able to help Jenny's mum with all the details of funerals and other things. 

We made the decision early on that although we would keep our main speaking engagements our priority would be to help out and we're really grateful to those of you we were supposed to be seeing for being so understanding when we had to change or cancel plans.

We did manage to see some (but not all) of our family and close friends ... met Popeye's gorgeous little puppies and Abigail had fun colouring with Auntie Betty (who turned 95 last week ... Happy Birthday Betty!).

We also made it to see friends in Oxford and a little All Nations reunion in Birmingham ... with a few extra little people in our midst since we were all last together! Thanks to the Lynch's for hosting us all!

Abigail made herself some new friends ... all of whom she continues to tell us are 'her favourite' ... everything is 'her favourite' at the moment. She also continued to love and be extremely goofy with her little sister while we we away!

We did take Nana to the seaside one day ... and had fun even though it was cold and wet and also took her to help at the paint your own pottery morning we did.

In our final week we planned to catch up with some of our missed appointments as well as fulfilling the plans we'd made before heading back home to the States. Those plans were also thwarted when one-by-one we all managed to pick up a variety of virsuses, chest infections, gastric flu, ear infections ... etc etc etc ... almost to the point that we wondered if we would be fit to fly home last week.

As a result of all this we didn't take too many photos or have lots of exciting stories to tell. We do know each other a bit better than we did before and what we can cope with ... so that is definitely something positive that has come out of a trip that was completely different from what we had envisaged.

We made it home to small town Ohio last Tuesday and although we're still not recovered from the sickness almost 3 weeks later, we're really happy to be back with our own home comforts. We're all thriving a bit more being back into a 'normal' routine ... just need to get 100% healthy now.

To those of you we did see ... we really enjoyed it ... for those we didn't, we hope that next year goes slightly more to plan!!

REAL Bacon!

Usually our blog entries are aimed mainly at our UK and overseas friends and family about our time in the States. This one however is for the benefit of our US friends in an attempt to educate them a little on the delicacy of REAL bacon!!

We've just had a trip back to England and each time we return we have a 'wish list' of food to eat while we're back, things that we've missed and can't get hold of while living overseas. Both times we've arrived in the UK from living in the States, our first 'meal' has been a morning bacon sandwich ... each to their own, but for us this is a priority!

Here in the States bacon is a whole different thing to what we think of in the UK. We think 80% (or more!) meat with a bit of fat too, in the US it's more like 80% fat, with a little bit of meat if you're lucky!

The photo above is bacon of the typical US variety ... really fatty and unhealthy and the reason we want real bacon when get to England. Below is the stuff only in our dreams while living here in small town America. YUM!

Just to get the taste buds completely watering ... and knowing that we now can't eat this for another year ... here is the bacon cooking ...

And below, the bacon ready for the tomato ketchup and the top slice of bread ... delicious and something not to be missed!

It's really difficult to convey to our American friends the true experience of REAL bacon without having the ability to 'scratch and sniff' the computer screen or have a sample to taste. All we will say is WOW .... we had several while we were home and they were all delicious. Now back in the States we have one more year and counting until we can have them again!