How About I Catch You Up? Would That Be Marvelous?

All right.

When last we met, I regaled you with our harrowing aqua-adventure. Guess what - when we gave the kids a choice of things to do this weekend, they chose to go swimming again. The clincher for Audrey was getting to wear her new pink "My Little Pony" swimsuit. The kids talked again this morning about the adventure and how rescuing Audrey was a joint effort. We were discussing this after Caleb came downstairs and reported that Steve would be down after he finished bandaging his sliced toe from the whole affair.

Today is Steve's b-day. He's 35. Grannie, we got your card last week. Gigi, we got your card yesterday. The kids gave Steve a "new black jumper," according to Caleb. It's actually a dark navy blue sweater. I gave him a set of cds with show tunes. After we dropped off Steve at work, the kids and I listened to "Anything You Can Do" from Annie Get Your Gun about 12 times. The kids kept requesting to hear it again. It's a fun song for little kids, I guess. It's a fun song for me!

Now the girls and I are back home. Juju is taking a nap and Audrey is marching in circles using a pencil and a little plastic water clock (a clock that uses water for power) as a drum. Lovely. I have a friend coming over this afternoon for coffee around 2 p.m., which means I have to straighten the house. Oh well. The visit will be worth it.

Back to recounting our adventures...

Last Saturday we were supposed to meet Cindy and the kids at the photography studio where I had Julie's pictures taken. We were going to do some pictures of the cousins since we thought Cindy & her kids weren't coming back to the US for Christmas. When we got there, the people were surprised to see us. They said that they hadn't been able to get in touch with us to confirm the shoot and get a deposit, so they cancelled the shoot and sent the photographer home since our now-cancelled appointment was the last in their day.

WHAT? I paid the deposit over the phone! Turns out the lady who I had been dealing with had broken her leg on Thursday night and had not been at work on Friday to pull our information like she would have normally. So the other people cancelled on us. They tried to get in touch with the photographer, but he was already long gone. In the meantime (while they were in the process of trying to locate the photographer), we found a gas station for Cindy to fill up at. She had already been to 4 stations and had found NO UNLEADED GAS at any of them! Everyone was out. Weird.

So we ended up back at Cindy's place. A nice flat in Charvil. About 7 minutes from the studio. On the way there the studio called and said they couldn't get the guy back and could we reschedule? By this time I had decided that since the Baldridges were going to be in the states for Christmas, we could do a real cousin photo shoot (like we've done for several years now) with all 7 cousins - my 3, Cindy's 2, and Greg & Lora's 2. So I said, "no thank you" to rescheduling and we went on with our day.

We chatted for a while and then went to the local pub for dinner. The Waggon & Horses. Pub food has been redeemed for me. We had some fabulous mussels in a garlic butter sauce, then some prime rib (me), lamb shank (Steve), and fish & chips (Caleb & Audrey). Cindy had this salad that had all sorts of veggies and some apples, even. The dressing had some interesting spices in it - I know I tasted mint, and I think I tasted either thyme or rosemary. I'm not sure. Anyway, it was good.

Sunday was a restful day. Cindy and the kids came over late in the afternoon and we ordered pizza and played Uno. Good times. Jarrett won the whole thing. After the Uno game, we let Caleb & Audrey get in to their advent calendars for the chocolate for 3rd day. We then lit our advent candle that Gwen got for us at Windsor, and read the kids' new book about the Christmas story. We all got involved when Audrey chose Connor & Jarrett to read parts of the story.

The kids have enjoyed their advent calendars. Audrey's is a Barbie one and Caleb's is Dr. Who. Dr. Who is a long-running and very popular sci-fi TV show over here. We never watched it, though, because I think it would be like trying to get involved when the story's almost over. What's the point? Maybe when we get home we'll see if we can rent DVDs and watch the thing from the beginning in 1963. Apparently it was cancelled and brought back on another network.

Anyway...what's Christmas without a dancing Barbie and a time-traveling scientist?

So that was last weekend. Everything has been normal for the last 2 days, except the computer has been freezing up on us. Irritating. I finally ran some super-duper anti-spyware detectors and discovered TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE "infections." Got them all cleared out and now things appear to be back to normal.

I've been telling the kids for weeks that we can't go home until we have a final surprise visitor. They didn't know until Saturday that the surprise visitor is Nana. She comes in on the 15th and will help us get ready to go home and will fly home with us. I'm relieved to have another set of hands. Everyone has their own seat this time - no holding Julie for the whole flight. The seats on this plane are 2-aisle-4-aisle-2. Not conducive to a 5-person family, but when you add a 6th, you can come up with some nice configurations. We'll be sitting on 3 rows in the 2 seats on the side. Make sense?

I'm going to sign off now and go get a cuppa coffee before I sweep the ridiculously uneven slate floor in the kitchen. I hate to do it because nothing seems to work except the vacuum and I can't find vacuum bags for the darn thing and this one is filling up fast. Hmmm.