Smith Epic Easter Holiday

As you can probably tell from my absence, school has resumed for the kids and we're back to busy schedules! Christmas was absolutely beautiful in Henley this year - barely any rain! It even snowed a couple of times...not enough to build a snowman, but definitely enough to make a snowball or two! 

During the February half-term, we were invited to a big cottage in Shropshire to celebrate our friend Helen's 40th birthday. The countryside was beautiful...but the night drive to the cottage had me thinking we were filming the Blair Witch Project! 

The next school term passed by quickly and Audrey has been part of a committee to rebrand the Badgemore School logo and uniform! I'll be sure to post a picture of the new uniform once they finalise plans and start selling them. 

We had a big two-week holiday planned with Stegen's parents for the Easter Holidays, but Grandpa had a herniated disk and needed surgery immediately. We all suffered a bit of heartache - it's been almost 8 months since we've seen any family! We're so sad that GG and Papa won't be with us for our holiday, but we are very glad that the surgery went well and that he's feeling good. We love you Mom and Dad!!

Last week, a crazy discovery almost called for a cancellation of our part of the holiday as well! Audrey's US passport expires on May 24, 2015...plenty of time to get it renewed after our trip, right? Wrong!! Five days before our departure, I find out that we need at least 6 months' validity left on our passports in order to travel to certain countries in Europe - like Italy! Panic!! Do we bring her birth certificate and hope for the best? Do we leave her behind with two weeks' worth of Cheerios and milk?!

Thankfully, I pressed enough zero's to get through to a live person at the US Embassy in London. We got her in for an emergency extension and after an £88 train fare and 3.5 hours of agony, we were handed a five-page passport. Phew! Audrey's coming with us after all!

We're driving to Gatwick airport as I type and spending the night there before our 7am flight tomorrow. I'll leave you with our itinerary and hope to update a few times during our trip! 

Smith Epic Easter Holiday Itinerary:

- Fly to Zurich, stay one night

- Take the (awesome) Bernina Express Panoramic train through the Swiss Alps!!

- Take a train to Lake Como, Italy to stay in the town of Bellagio for two nights

- Take a train to Venice where GG rented an amazing apartment for us. Spend three nights including Easter weekend there!

- Take Bahn train from Venice to Munich in a train compartment! 

- Spend 4 nights in Munich to explore the city and Bavarian area.

- Fly back to London

It's an ambitious trip...originally planned for four adults to wrangle two children around. Now it's two on two - wish us luck!

I'm THANKFUL...

I'm thankful for really (brutally!) honest family...who have reminded me multiple times of how much I really suck at blogging. Thanks, Mom!! So here I am, trying to redeem myself! We hope everyone back home had a wonderful Thanksgiving. If anyone would be willing to flash freeze a Honeybaked ham and express ship it over here, the four of us would be eternally grateful.

Well, there's way too much to update. Just thinking about everything I want to share gives me anxiety, so I'm just going to touch on some important points that I want to remember when I'm 90 and senile:

- Summer was beautiful here, but man, not having air conditioning made the 70 degree weather feel like 100. It was also really muggy, with no beach to jump into. My hair wasn't happy.

- We spent an AMAZING two weeks island hopping in Greece. One of our friends was going, so we decided to follow in their footsteps. It was miserably hot, but Sifnos and Folegandros were beautiful and I pretty much ate my body weight in gyros. I did order the local dish of baby goat...that didn't go over very well!

- Almost immediately after we returned from Athens, we got right back on a plane and went home to California for the rest of summer (I hate and love Bank of America for this). I got pictures of myself eating awesome food that I can't find in England...but I won't force those on you. Needless to say, I packed on a few lbs, but it was worth it. Thanks again for the 10lb slabs of chocolate, Ansel!!

We got to see (and hug!) our families and quite a few of our lovely friends. We'll be back next year! Let's just take a moment and remember how awesome tapioca is:

- The kids had a short 6-week summer break, so school started right after we got back to Henley. During their half-term break in October, we took the Eurostar to Belgium and spent the week in Bruges-the most enchanting little town we've seen yet. If you're headed to Belgium, don't miss it! Brussels, on the other hand, you could probably skip!

Anyway, I gave myself five minutes to write an update and while there isn't as much detail as I'd like, I think I was successful...right Mom??

Blog: FAIL

I'll just come out and say it: I'm el lame-o. Seriously, don't ever pay me to maintain a blog for you--the couch calls my name after long days and I'm not strong enough to say NO. 

My mother-in-law gave me a little pep talk the other day and suggested that I just get on here and sum up what's happened so far and start fresh from there. I'm going to take her advice--I mean, I started this blog to update family and friends, but also to have something to look back on twenty years down the road when living in England will be a past that we'll struggle to remember. So, even if all of our 5 blog followers have unsubscribed and given up, I'm going to give this another go...for us.

So the last time I sort of blogged, we were on our way to Scotland. Edinburgh is stunning. The landscape is so layered, you can't help but gawk in awe at the 360° view of awesomeness. It's too much to detail, but we visited all the main sites and spent most of our time at their National Museum. The castle is splendid (yeah, I said "splendid") and we got to see their 13:00 firing of the cannon for historical timekeeping. Scared the crap out of me...my countdown was wrong. Here are just a few pictures:

Climbed to the top of Arthur's seat, Edinburgh's inactive volcano.

In case you're wondering--yes, they sell traditional Scottish attire at almost every gift shop and bagpipers are on rotation to play constantly in the city center. We grabbed the obligatory Scotland shot:

Once we got home, school was back in full swing and Audrey had playdates, parties, sports day, and lots of homework. One assignment was to make up a Fairytale based on a well-known one. Here's her story--definitely worth a read! And side note: she amazes me to no end.

This picture reminds me of how awesome this race was. All of the kids were split into teams, so one team had kids from all years. When it was time for Audrey to race, all of the Year 5 kids started chanting her name. She told me after crossing the finish line that their chants made her heart feel full and pushed her to go faster. Kids are amazing.

Anyway, July rolled around and a friend of mine named Hillary invited us to the fancy Steward's Enclosure at the Henley Royal Regatta. There were quite a few rules that guests of the enclosure had to abide by, but in the end, the experience was worth the near heat stroke Stegen and I suffered. No kids allowed in the enclosure, but she gave us all boat tent passes so we were able to take the kids into the first section to meet the rowers. Go Cal and Yale!

Right around July 4th, with my birthday around the corner, I got extremely homesick. Our first year of no Independence Day BBQ and fireworks--sad trombone. Luckily, we have some pretty fab friends here. We all got together, gathered as many Americans and Brits married to Americans as we could, and had our own little celebration at the local brewery. I even made a cake!

American kids, half-American kids, and three non-American kids who love Americans.

For my birthday, we went to a beach called West Whittering with one of our favorite families. Here's our friend Tuc joining in on a jump shot! And in case you were wondering, yes, we were all wearing hoodies (minus my crazy kids) because, well, it was freezing a** cold!!!!

Two days later, Audrey freaked out, screamed and wailed through the gentle extraction of her second loose tooth. 

You might be surprised to hear this, but hot damn...it's sizzling over here! We've had some boiling days (like, over 75°, which without A/C is like 900°). In England, there's no guarantee that we'll have warm days twice in a row, so when it happens, we seize the day and spend as much time in our back garden as we can. 

Well, that's the best I can do for now. I still have a bunch of pictures and really intelligent things to say, but a relaxing shower and Orange is the New Black are on the agenda tonight, so I'll save my smartness (is that a word?) for later. We're finishing out the last week of school (hallelujah!) and we're off to Greece for two weeks of holiday. Check out Sifnos and Folegandros--we'll be kicking up our feet there for awhile!

I'll leave you with a video of Audrey singing God Save the Queen--she's quite the American Anglophile!

Thanks...But No Thanks, Adobe.

We just finished the sad process of filing our taxes for the US and now we're facing the even more depressing task of filing our UK taxes. Pricewaterhouse Coopers is doing a fine job, don't get me wrong...they just speak in a language that I don't understand and tell me things that I don't want to hear. Sure, we have an agreement between our two countries that ensures we aren't double taxed on our income, but it's all the other little things that they do tax that might push me over the edge.

Apparently, most people don't file a tax return in the UK. If you pay your 40% (!!!!!) income tax as you earn your income and pay the 20% sales tax (VAT, and you don't have a choice), then you should be good with the government. You're left with no money, and therefore, are not required to give up anymore. However, if you are lucky enough to get some private insurance from your company (which then gives you dental, vision--yenno, things you actually use more than seeing a GP for a cold), well then by golly, you'll pay. So it turns out all these cool things that our PruHealth gives us (free movie tickets, etc), aren't actually...free. Thanks...but no thanks, Adobe.

On top of that, if I bring anymore money over from the States, the UK will tax any interest earned in the US. I know that's minimal, since our interest rates in the US have been hovering slightly above 0%, but still--it's mine!

Grumble, grumble...we'll get over it soon. 

Anyway, other than that D-R-A-M-A, we've been soaking in the great weather. Regatta set-up is in full-swing and I'll get a good picture of the grandstands soon. Fun fact that I learned from a friend: the rowing scenes from the movie The Social Network, were filmed right at our Henley bridge and along our stretch of the Thames River. Pretty cool!

Here's what else we've been up to:

1. Dorian and I went to check out Legoland Windsor. I'm happy to report that it's pretty much Legoland San Diego, just much closer for me to get to and had a Mini Land that it want to build in my back garden. Instead of Las Vegas, New York, and San Francisco, Legoland Windsor has intricate displays of Denmark, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Italy, Sweden, and several other European destinations. The park offers a pre-school pass, which, for the price of a single ticket entry, gives me (or any guardian) and Dorian both access to the park for a year. The only stipulation is that we can't go during school holidays or weekends. Guess this will be our Friday hangouts until summer vacation! Here are some pictures from our day:

2. We used one of our (non)free perks from our PruHealth Insurance last weekend. We got ourselves memberships to the National Trust, which gives us access to beautiful National Trust properties across the UK. The two near our house are Grey's Court and Cliveden. We chose to visit Cliveden, home to several great Dukes, Earls, and Countesses for our first trip and happened upon a birthday event for Nancy Astor, wife of the final owner of the estate, William Astor. There were actors around every corner, totally in character and chatting with us during our picnic like it was 1920! Good party, Nancy!

Nancy Astor's aunt and cousins

This is the first maze that we seriously got lost in...somehow we made it to the middle and out again!

3. Dorian had a preschool field trip to a place in Fawley called the McAlpine Estates. The property is where the steam Faire happens each year and it turns out, one of his teachers lives on a house on the estate. Her father happens to work for the McAlpines and takes care of the many animals on their property. We got a behind-the-scenes tour on some off-roading golf buggies (or Polarus ATV something or other) and got to drive right up to the animals. Sure beat going to the zoo!

Tapirs are huge!!!

4. Audrey and Dorian had their May Faire at school and both had some dance performances. Dorian's dance was all flower power with scarves and floral headbands, swaying and jumping to "Let It Go". I only took a video and can't figure out how to grab a still shot from it, so you'll just have to use your imagination. Think: cute.

Audrey was in two May Pole dances. Other than the pole and various bright ribbons, the partner dance reminded me of square dancing in the States. While it almost looked like some Pagan ritual, I was just a bit in awe at how the older kids weaved around each other at pretty high speeds, didn't crash, and made pretty ribbon patterns on the pole. The performances ended up getting rained out, but hey, Audrey and Dorian were already done, so...

5. We took a hike up one of the public footpaths across the street from our house. Apparently, if people walk a certain path for something like over a year without the landowner fighting it legally, that path becomes public. So as we walked, we came upon private property, but we're able to follow the footpath and cut right through the landowner's fields. Not only that, the sheep on his property get to roam free across the footpath and Dorian got several chances to freak them out..."Come heeeeeere sheeeeeeep!!"

6. Most exciting part of these last few weeks! Stegen's old buddy from San Francisco came out to London for some business and took time on Friday to hop on the train and come see us in Henley. It was ridiculously exciting to see Jay, our first friend Henley visitor from the States. We took him to our favorite pub, The Three Tuns, ate a fab meal, walked along the river, showed him the house, and sent him off with Stegen to another pub to catch up. I know we're not in London proper, but Henley is beautiful and apparently, pretty famous. If you're in London and willing to spare a day, please come out to the country and see another side of England. Jay told us it was totally worth it and that the town was so picture perfect, he felt like he was in a movie. So glad you came out, Jay! See you in Copenhagen?

Well, it's half-term break here so we're taking the week to explore Northern York and Edinburgh in Scotland. I was meant to meet up with my friend that I met in Australia, but in my lack-of-brain-cells state, mixed up the dates and will just miss her. Ah well, as long as the rain stays away-ish, we'll be sure to have some great adventures.