HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

From our home to yours, much love and many blessings!

 

Another Christmas tradtion that Stephannie's family has done for a number of years is to have a stuffed toast, egg, dish called "Wife Saver". As you can see Stephannie was very happy with how it turned out.

On the night before Christmas...

On the night (and day) before Christmas Stephannie was stirring...as she made Christmas Stolen and sugar cookies, and Tourtiere.

Stephannie thought that the best way to get to know the neighbours was to introduce us along with her Christmas baking.

Check out our nice blue dishes, and see how we have not measuring cups? Stephannie used the glasses as her cups and guess-imated the rest. 

First she made the stolen, using her fathers family recipe.

Mixed:
 Risen:
Baking:
Cooling:

 After 6 regular loafs of  regular wheat flour stolen, Stephannie went on to make 2 loafs of wheat-free flour stolen. Needless to say she was still smiling even with her apron still in a shipping box somewhere with the rest of our things; her dress collected the mess rather well. :)

Later that evening we hosted Parousia for Christmas Eve dinner. In Stephannie's family they have as long as she can remember had Tourtiere a French Canadian meat pie for dinner, so keeping up the tradition she made a lovely one we all enjoyed.


Hope you all have a very good Christmas Eve!

Rain, Rain Go Away....

Another trip into London this weekend. However were are feeling like we are still in Vancouver as the rain pours buckets and buckets! Where is all this snow??? We did move a few more degrees North, and all the lovely post cards the shops are selling have Cambridge and London in a lovely white blanket of snow. No such luck for us.

Today Parousia joined us on our market adventures. He is also as student here in Cambridge and is a friend of a friend who we met once we moved to Cambridge. Parousia is working on his PHD in Maths. (We seem to know mostly math people thus far...).

Another Christmas Market, this time in Hyde Park "Winter Wonderland" might have been better to call it Winter Wetland! We thought that by going early that we would get there before the crowds, but I think that the rain helped with that. The market was quite, unless you can the "spla-oo-sh" as you stepped on the temporary sidewalk. Each step we took was a game of chance, would you get wet as a small geyser came shooting up between the sidewalk tiles or you be safe to step onto another.

In the center of the park is an ice rink....though we are not sure we would call it. Take a look at this video. It is not how we do things back in Canada.

Following the market we headed back thinking we would go to Convent Gardens market area for lunch, only Stephannie found something to eat as we left the market...(drum roll please...) Llama burgers!

After enjoying her burger we all headed to Convent Gardens where we were delighted to find a 17 foot tall advent calendar made out of Lego! There are over 600,000 pieces of Lego. What a sight to see, each day they open a new box! We were able to see into 21 of the boxes even though they were going to open another box today we didn't make it back to see what was inside.
















Inside you will find Christmas pudding. In the UK pudding = dessert, not pudding like we know it to be. Then you can see presents, a lovely green wreath, a star, ordainment  and many other lovely things. And we were in fact lucky as we got to see some snow...even if it was just Lego.


Only a few more days to go until Christmas!

Eggnog anyone?

So around Christmas Stephannie has always had eggnog, but trying to find it in the UK has been tricky. We did spend some time on Google looking for eggnog in England and found that many people reported local pubs having their own rum mix of eggnog.

However, on one of our trips to Tesco we discovered....Eggnog in a tetra pack! When it was rung up at the till, the clerk had to check we were of legal age, funny to think of needing to be carded for a tetra pack.

Brendan enjoyed the tetra pack of eggnog at one of our games nights. He says it was yummy.

To Market to Market...

Today we went into London with our friend Richard who is working on his Master in Maths, at Cambridge University  As you can see there is still no snow here in London or Cambridge. We are hoping it comes in time for Christmas.

As you walk around the cities you will find many beautiful buildings and grand old churches. In the center of town is a lovely market which is open daily with fresh produce, and handmade gifts and art.

Our most recent trip into London with Richard we went to see one of the larger Christmas markets in London which runs along the River Thames, near the London Eye. This market is huge and packed with holiday shoppers and sightseers.

As you can see from some of our photos there were tasty treats and traditional holiday items at every turn. It was cooler down by the river so we were happy to warm up with a paper cone of candy toasted nuts. They were very tasty!

While at the market we saw many, many, many...Santas! It seemed that the were off on a march or something. We later found them again in Trafalgar Square. It seems that the Santas were warm and jolly, maybe it had to do with them not having toys and gifts for children but tins of "Christmas cheer"?

More market fun to follow next week we are sure as we travel to Hyde Park for the Winter Wonderland. Hoping for snow!

On the day in our new home my true love and I found….

One doorknob handle off our front door…so being an older building when we went to open the door from the inside of our home the knob came off in our hand. This was known before we moved in and the kind company handy man work on fixing the door while I cleaned.

There was much cleaning to be done in the kitchen and the rest of the place. Fridge was the worst…EWWW…YUCK!  While I cleaned our front door was fixed, it opens like a dream J.(No photos too gross to see)

A New Home

What a delight it was to awake to see we have had a dusting of snow in the night, by a dusting we mean it looked like someone too a sieve and dusted the area with the least amount of snow ever! Brendan headed off to work I finished packing up our things we had brought with us and acquired while staying at our temporary flat. Today was moving day! While Brendan was at work I would move all of our things with the help of the relocation agent Natalie. (THANKS again Natalie you were such a life saver and huge help). All of our 5 suite cases, 1 guitar, a printer/scanner, various food items, etc. were loaded into Natalie’s car and drove to Oxford Road.

Once the bags were unloaded Richard former classmate from SFU that had taken classes with Brendan, and who is working on his masters helped me run around finding things like dishes and food for the evening. RICHARD ROCKS! Richard and I walked into tow, which is about 20 minutes then around the city center, than we carried 4 sets of dishes and food back to a bus to get home. All the while hoping we would not slip on the ice that was as a result of the snow.

After our first meal of seasonal veggies and chicken; which was all prepared y only using a plate and butter knife, we left Richard to study as Brendan and I went to get a much needed kettle and toaster. After another walk into town we were able to get a kettle and toaster and the other most needed things like a baking sheet and cookie cutters…YAY….Christmas cookies soon to be made. J

We took our load home again, and then went out to Tesco to get an air mattress and bedding, we were very lucky to get there with 7 min before they closes.  After that we called a taxi and went home. We had a chuckle when the driver asked us home to get to our place, and we said we were not sure we had just moved there. But we did make it home safe and sound. After what seems like hours we had an inflated mattress and went to sleep in our new home.

Happy Birthday Brendan!

With only having been in Cambridge for about a week it was already time to test Stephannie's baking skills. Stephannie managed to make a cake without having all her much loved baking tools and with different supplies then she was used to and make Brendan a lovely cake, which we were able to share with Richard, a  class mate from SFU, who is now studying in Cambridge.

 Happy 30th Birthday Brendan!

Canada to Cambridge

On November 20th, 9 years after our first date we had dinner with our parents in the Vancouver Airport. Following our meal we boarded a flight to Gatwick Airport in London, England.  We arrived after a bit of a bumpy light and a failed landing, we were greeted by our driver. He seemed rather surprised that we have 5 suitcases, guitar and a few small bags; we soon found out that he had a small car for us. After playing a life size puzzle we were able to fit it all in.  It was well over a 2 hour drive to Cambridge, where our temporary flat is.

During our first week there was a lot of running around, but we are blessed that we have been able to find a place to live and Stephannie has found work for January until July.

Stephannie will be teaching a year 1/2 class in St. Noets. She is looking forward to getting back into teaching and learning all the new/different terms for things.

The last supper

We had so many bags to take to the airport it took both sets of parents to get us there. When all the bags were placed on the scales we found we have 93.0 KG of stuff! And just think after our bags were checked we still had our boxes somewhere on their way across Canada.

Bags checked, boxes shipped we sat down for our last family dinner at the airport.

 

 

Our life in 25 boxes

So after much sorting, selling, giving, and tossing we have gotten what we think are our must haves to work and set up home into 25 boxes.

A special thank you goes to Stephannie's father who helped us drill and zap-strap all the boxes. We only wish we had, had more time to play with our fort before it was picked up to be shipped out. (Muzzypug was ready to go too, he thought he would go dressed as a Canadian Mountie just so everyone would know he was a Canadian sock monster.)