The driving isn't the only thing that is backwards

Things that keep tripping me up here in Jolly Old London:

1. Of course, the traffic being on the wrong side of the road. I feel like I have to look both ways about 50 times before I feel safe stepping foot off of the curb.

2. The light switches are backwards. You turn it up to switch the light on. Most of the light switches are outside of the rooms (i.e. in the hall). Also, every single electrical outlet has a light switch on it that must be turned on before it will work. There are also numerous mystery switches for which we have no idea what they operate.

3. The metric system. Everything is in grams, kilograms, Celsius, etc. Not too much of a problem except when I am cooking. I'm having a bugger of a time trying to figure out how many kg=1 cup.

4. The commbination washer/dryer. It is *tiny*. It will fit about 2 bath towels and maybe a hand towel and that is it. And it will take about 5 hours for it to dry the above load, and even then it is still damp and extremely wrinkled. It has already shrunk many of our clothes, and I'm fretting about what to do for some of our nicer items that I absolutely don't want to shrink.

5. There are no electrical outlets in the bathrooms. The idea is to keep any of those zany Brits from doing something rash like blowdrying their hair in the shower. Since the only mirrors in the house are in the bathrooms, I've been trying to style my hair in the reflection of the brass light switch plate in my bedroom. Not looking too good these days.

6. No closets. I knew this, and yet it is still so bizarre. I've not figured out what exactly one does with all their shoes when there is no closet to put them in.

7. There is no standard format for phone numbers here. In the States, a number will invariably look like this: (123)456-7890. Here, it could be any combination of this:
000 1111 2222 or 00011 112222 or 00 0111 12222 and so on. It makes it very difficult to try to memorize any number. Also, the first digit of the number denotes whether it is a home line, mobile line, or business phone. This is important to know, since you are charged differnt amounts to call each one.

8. You have to pay to use shopping carts at the grocery store.

9. We don't have a disposal in our sink. I was so perplexed, trying to figure out how you do the dishes when you can't just scrape everything into the sink.

10. We also don't have a microwave. Reheating food has been a small challenge.

11. They don't sell eggnog, my favorite Christmas drink which I look forward to all year. I'd make it myself, but I don't have an electric mixer to beat the eggs. And Santa Claus is "Father Christmas".



I'm sure there are lots more things that I don't even know about yet, but those are the ones I've encountered so far.

Christmas with Mickey

Danny's office had a Christmas party yesterday. Those Disney folks do Christmas Parties up right! It was the best Christmas party I've been to, even though there was no booze for the weary parents.


She played pin the tail on the tiger. Apparently, we still have some work to do on teaching her exactly where tails go. She didn't even have a blindfold as an excuse.

Fishing for Nemo:



We were very lucky that Goofy showed up, since he is currently Kate's favorite Disney character. We're not really sure why, but she likes "that dog one".


Getting painted to be "as pretty as a Princess":



Michael slept through the whole event. What a party pooper.

We're Here!

We're here! We arrived in London last week. Like the stereotypical dumb Americans we might be, we didn't have heat for two days because we couldn't figure out how to light the boilers.

We still don't have internet, phone or tv at the house, so I'm feeling quite isolated these days. I'm paying $20/hour right now at Starbucks, but I only last as long as Kate's patience.

Anyway, I'll post more details later, but I wanted to let you all know that we all arrived safely.

Our clothes, Christmas presents & decorations, diapers, etc., are all still in the US. They were supposed to leave 2 weeks ago. It is looking like we might not have them before Christmas now. We had 2 shipments coming over, one air and one sea. The Air shipment was supposed to arrive last week but it keeps getting bumped for some reason. I'm trying to remain optimistic, but I'll be extremely upset if we don't have our things before Christmas. Not to mention that I'm quite tired of wearing the same 4 outfits I packed in my suitcase!!

Happy Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.
Ours was pretty quiet, but I did manage to Iron Chef up a decent spread. I only had to buy 3 things, and the rest of it came from my fridge/freezer/pantry!
We had:
Turkey from Honeybaked Ham (courtesy of Kellogg's)
Green Beans with Chevre and Pomegranate seeds
bourbon glazed sweet potatoes
Stuffing
Spinach Salad
Homemade bread
Crunchy Caramel apple pie
pumpkin butter cake
Granola Bar pie
pecan pie (brought by my mom)
pumpkin spice cake

It was yummy, and actually pretty healthy. Well, not so much with all that pie!
So we spent most of the weekend organizing all of our stuff. We're having to divide all of our things into what goes on the plane, what goes with us, what goes on the boat and what goes into storage. The movers come on Monday to start packing!!

I feel like there are a million things that I needed/wanted to buy before we left, but of course I can't remember most of them now. I've done a good job of stocking up on toiletries, diapers, wipes, & kid clothing, so hopefully we won't have to purchase too much stuff when we get there.

I'm getting very excited. I can't believe it is already here. It feels like we've been planning this for so long, and now it is almost here! Wheee!

Miiiiichael

Danny told me last night I sound like a redneck whenever I say "Michael".

Whatever.

Getting Ready...

The movers are coming on Monday to start packing us up! I can't believe the big move is already here!! We're getting terribly excited about spending Christmas in London. I looked up things to do, like taking Kate to see Santa at Harrods, going ice skating, the lighting of the tree in Trafalgar Square. It will be a jolly good time! :)

Here are a few pictures of our new pad. It is 4 stories. The kitchen and home office is on the bottom floor, the living rooms are on the ground floor, and the bedrooms and bathrooms are on the top 2 floors. We have a small garden for Dexter too. The crazy thing is that there are no closets! So I'll have to get creative with storage. I'm not sure where we'll store things like carseats (since we won't have a car), the dog crate, etc.

Cousins

All of our family came in town last weekend to celebrate Michael's baptism.
Kate had so much fun playing with her cousin Andy! I'll post a more detailed recap of the baptism later, with more pictures.