Confessions and Observations

Christmas in Canada

We spent more than 2 weeks in Canada this Christmas, visiting with family and a few friends. We missed having my sister around, she is in Australia with her boyfriend's family, but we were certainly busy enough and got to stay with people who we had never stayed with before.

Milo had a fabulous Christmas. He couldn't have been happier digging though his Grandpa's treasure chest looking at key chains, old jewelery and other sparkly, dangly stuff. I even found a few of my Mom's old treasures, like a pair of butterfly earrings and a silver cuff bracelet and claimed them for myself. Milo wore his Grandma out, running around the house with her and giving her tackle hugs. His favorite gifts were a handmade wooden puzzle from Grant that he made for his own kids years ago, a kitty doll from Grandma, a semi-truck from Auntie Jill that goes when you push it and a giant stuffed Hippo and mini hockey stick from cousin Ethan, Gabrielle, Robin and Fred. He learned about hockey from Ethan, who took him to a neighbors house with a rink in their backyard and he stood on the ice while everyone skated around him. Later he wouldn't take the helmet off and wanted to play again. He also went to the Zoo for the first time with his cousins and saw a tiger, baby elephant, giraffes, hippos and gorillas.

Chris and I had a great time too, eating lots of fabulous food and relaxing. Mom cooked steaks, ribs, buttons (snips of boiled, then fried dough), German potatoes and ham, turkey and all the fixings. It was all so good! Chris dug through my Dad's old records and learned about how to use a multimeter. I got a massage and facial and drove around Medicine Hat in Jill's car liking the fact that you can get anywhere you need to go in 10 minutes.

In Calgary we had a great time staying with Robin and Fred and getting to know them better. They cooked delicious meals for us too and we had fun spending time with the kids. We had a very fun New Years at Tara and Dave's drinking port and watching the celebrations on TV. There were a lot of people in Calgary that we didn't get a chance to see, it's so tough to see everyone, and we decided if we ever have enough money to buy a second home, it would be in Calgary, or in Banff, to make it easier to come and stay for a while.

Photos to come soon.

 

A Day at the Beach Video

For everyone who is as cold as I am, here is a video from the summer of us at Nauset Beach on Cape Cod. Enjoy!

Dreaming of an Airstream Trailer

I guess it's the cold weather. All I can think about is going somewhere that is warmer. If we lived in an Airstream, we'd just have to drive a few days and magically be in a new place with sunnier skies. Some day...

At The Beach

We got home from Cape Cod last Friday night at 2am after driving all night. We planned most of the five and a half hour drive to occur at night so that Milo slept through most of it. It worked out pretty well, we left for the trip at 4:30 am and made it 3 hours before having to stop at a Cracker Barrel to have breakfast and get Milo changed out of pajamas. After the hour and half pit stop we got back on the road and after 45 minutes of needing to be entertained, he fell asleep for his morning nap and slept the rest of the way to the Cape. We arrived at the Wequassett Resort around noon and hung out at our pool cabana until we could check into our room at 3:30 pm.

Nauset Beach was fun the two times that we went with intense waves and beautiful sand. Milo loved chasing the waves with me and was happily shocked when they would wash over his legs while standing next to me. He loved playing with all the older boys, even though he often got in their way and sometimes destroyed their sand castles. We saw fighter jets flying over the ocean from Otis Air Force Base and wished we could stay another day to go to the air show.

We ate great food at the resort and even got a home cooked meal at Gloria's rental house. Shopping in Chatham was fun in the mornings and during the occasional cloudy afternoon. Maddy spoiled me with some wonderful fall clothes and I could finally fit into size 30 designer jeans! We also toured a 5 bedroom, 3.5 million dollar house for sale with incredible water views and pretended that we could all buy it as a second home for the family to vacation at.

Milo charmed people at the hotel so that when we walked around people we hadn't met would say, "Hi Milo!" to him and just smile at us. He had a couple leaps of understanding while there, one morning he lifted up his breakfast plate with both hands, passed it to me and said "Ahhh Duuun". Chris and I were shocked, he seemed so grown up! He's also getting very good at understanding directions and would take rocks and shells to particular people if we asked him. He also had a low point when he violently threw up all over me (and my new outfit) in the car on the way to a nice dinner. We were worried he had food poisoning after a second episode when we got back to the room, so we called our pediatrician and located a 24 hour pharmacy just in case. He slept well that night though and woke up feeling fine. 

It was a great week spending time with Chris's family and introducing Milo to the beach. Check out our photos on Tabblo, and there is a video coming soon.

Introducing Tabblo and Sharing Photos from Cape Cod

From now on I will be posting all photos to a new application called Tabblo. You can view the menu of all the pages I have so far, starting with Milo's birth. I'm slowly moving myself away from Apple's .MAC account, as I have mentioned before, and this is the first step. You can view all the pages without creating your own account and even leave comments (I'd love to hear what you think!), but if you would like to order prints you will need to sign up and join my circle. It's a wonderful application and very easy to use, so if you take your own digital photos, consider joining and creating your own pages! My friend Jackie is a designer on the project and she tells me that there are many new tools being added soon that will make this already fun application even better.

The screen shot above is from the Tabblo I created from our recent trip to Cape Cod. We had such a fun time with Chris's family, celebrating Gloria's birthday, hanging out at the beach and staying at Wequassett Inn Resort. Check it out and browse around to also view photos from Chris's 39th birthday and Milo's third month!

Photos from London

I finally got all our photos from London posted: Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Enjoy!

"Nightmare"...and other London things

We are back safe from our eventful trip to London. Hopefully if you had been wondering about us last Thursday you somehow managed to get the news that we were fine and didn't worry too much. We spent most of the day indoors watching the news and while we were relatively far from the bombs we were still once again a little too close for comfort. It's just so sad these things keep happening. Later in the day when Regina and I were too restless to stay put and we managed to convince Chris that the television reporters saying "staying where you are" only applied if we planned on using the underground, we walked around Kensington and ended up riding one of the old hop-on-the-back Routemaster buses. It may seem strange that the day a bus was blown up we decided to ride one, but the thing is that we had been looking for the old ones because they are taking them out of service and we wanted to have a ride before they were all gone. It just happened that was the day we finally found them. We think it's because they brought the old ones out of service to help ease the pressure that the closed underground caused. At any rate, all our London friends applauded us basically giving the terrorists the finger by not being scared. Going underground was another story though, and while we ventured down for a quick 2 stop ride on Friday, we avoided the tube until Sunday by taking taxis, buses and walking.

Otherwise we had an amazing time with old friends and new ones. Corran and Arran are always inspiring and I always leave with a new project in my mind. This time it is old fashioned letter writing in the style of their grandfather, who writes a personalized letter once a day. I'm not that ambitious but I'll start by writing a letter to them. We got to know Arran's girlfriend Kelly better, who has got to be the sweetest girl ever and who diligently writes about her dreams and we met Laura, Corran's girlfriend, who taught us how to speak like a local (whateva' minga') and is in a band called She Makes War. Fred and Zoe were all moved into a great two floor flat in Kentish town and Leonard is as cute as ever. We got to lounge with them all at The Heath on Sunday. Of course we spent loads of quality time with Regina too, who shared our flat with us and introduced us to Tree (half of 10 Minutes with my Dad) and Adam and arranged an evening out for us to see our old pal Candy and met her new fiance who owns a bar called Fluid.

London was cool too. Favorites things were: Interesting Pub names like Old Dr. Butler's Head, Bag O' Nails, The Owl & The Pussycat, The Queen's Head, The Two Woodcocks and The Dog & Duck (which we visited in Soho). The Thames river boat tour to Greenwich and once there the Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude), Trafalgar Tavern and the foot tunnel under the Thames to the Docklands. Shopping on Neal Street in Covent Garden and at the gigantic Forbidden Planet comic store on New Oxford Street. Graffiti by Banksy, The Tate Modern in the retrofitted Bankside Power Station building and Riverside Walk in Southwark. The giant table and chair sculpture and swimming in the Ladies Pond (no men allowed) in Hampstead Heath.

Things we missed but will do next time, The Grapes pub in the Docklands, Chelsea Physic Garden, Sir John Soane's Museum and the street markets like Camden, Brick Lane and Portobello Road.

Next Stop, London

Well, we are off to London next week. We are looking forward to flying Virgin Atlantic, seeing our friends Corran & Arran and Fred & Zoe, renting an apartment with Regina, eating fish and chips, riding the tube, faking a british accent, seeing the view from the London Eye, playing it by ear and going to the pub. If you have been to London and know of things that we shouldn't miss, please let us know. Cheerio!