Saturday Fry Up, & Meet Up

Saturday I headed to Fiona's house to have a full English breakfast... for lunch!  I took a few busses to get there, but it was a relatively easy journey.  I got to meet her kids & husband, who were very welcoming, & lovely.  I had a fun afternoon just hanging out & chatting about British music & TV shows & movies.  We have similar tastes & it was nice to be able to talk to someone who has seen a lot of the same shows & listens to a lot of the same bands.

Later in the day I met up with Chad, & we stopped at a pub so he could have some good British Sausage & Mash.  We headed back to Geoff & Margaret's to spend the evening with them before heading back to Canada on Sunday.

We are very thankful for the blessing Geoff & Margaret have been to us.  They opened their home to us 13 years ago, when we were poor students struggling to find an affordable place to live in London, & failing miserably.  We have fond memories of walking their dog Tess, helping out when their 2 year old granddaughter Lucy was over for the day, & playing in the wading pool with the older grand-kids when the weather was hot.  We would have had a totally different experience of London if we had not lived with this generous couple.  They taught us what true hospitality was, simply by inviting us in.

Sadly, it was time to leave again, & hopefully it won't be another 7 years before we are back!

Wandering London

Friday I decided to walk around Oxford Street just to see the sights & perhaps do a little shopping.  I was amused when I stopped for a sandwich, by all the choices that I was not used to.

 

After awhile I thought I'd head to Brent Cross to a shopping centre I had heard about.  I wanted to take the Jubilee Line, but it was closed for upgrades, so I had to take the Northern Line.  When I got out at the station I decided it wouldn't take too long to walk to the shopping centre, but the area is really not set up for walking.  Every time I thought I was making headway getting closer to where I wanted to be, I'd find that the walkway ended, or there was no way to get from here to there.  At one point I was on the street below the shopping centre, & all that was between me & the shops was a brick wall of about 10 feet.  Unfortunately I could not figure out how to get from point A to point B, & at that point Fiona texted to see if I wanted to get together for dinner.  So, I wandered around for about 2 hours pointlessly, but I definitely got good exercise!

 I was glad for a rest after all that walking!

And I was happy that Fiona had thought about meeting up again!  Wandering around by myself was starting to get really old!  We spent a few hours talking about our families, & I even managed to get another invitation to hang out again Saturday!

A Visit to Ely

 A friend of mine from Washington State now lives in Ely.  Since Ely is only about an hour & 15 minutes, & I had not seen Meleah in about 10 years, & had never met her husband, & they just had a baby 10 days earlier, I decided to take a day to visit her!

 I had to take a train from King's Cross, so I decided to have a look at platform 9 3/4.  It was teeming with tourists!

Gemma & I bonded, & I got her all kitted out with some Canadian gear.

It was great to see Meleah again, & finally meet Luke & Gemma!

Meeting Up With the Old Crew

Wednesday morning I headed out to try to get my phone sorted out.  I had brought along the pay-as-you-go phone we had bought in Ireland when we visited in 2008 hoping it would work, but it said there was no service.  I took the train to Liverpool Street & stopped into a phone shop nearby.  The told me to go to a different shop where they could see if the phone was unlocked.  At that shop they told me that the phone was sadly locked & sent me to another shop to get it unlocked.  The third shop was closed dispite it being 10am.  I asked at the shop next door, where they directed me to a fourth shop to get the phone unlocked.  The fourth shop was also closed, so I gave up & headed to Tottenham Court Road to see how I'd fare.

I quickly found a phone shop & asked about getting a new pay-as-you-go phone.  They had some cheap phones I could get for around £25, but that would be about $50 Canadian.  I decided to head to the nearby Starbucks & see about adding a travel plan on my phone from home, which I discovered I could do for $5.  It was a lot of running around, but it used up some of the extra time I had.

After all that fun I headed to Covent Garden for some shopping!  I picked up some souvenirs for everyone & then it was time to meet up with my old workmates from when we lived in London.

 

As I walked to the pub where we were supposed to meet, I took a few pictures of the street signs

Apparently there were a few people I worked with who do not check their facebook very often, & they had no idea I had named my daughter after the street!

This is one of my favourites!

Fiona & Mora worked on the Reception desk with me, & were always fun to work with.

Ian & Pete

 I had not seen these people in over 12 years!  It was far too long & we had  a great time catching up.  We had planned to meet up at 3 in the afternoon on Wednesday, figuring that the pub would be dead & we would have the run of the place.  Strangely, there was a power cut, so all the nearby businesses had been let out & everyone had the same great idea to head to the pub!  Despite having no power, the pub carried on serving drinks.  After a few hours the lights came back on & everyone cheered.  At the end of the night you could see that the dishwasher had not been working, as the entire bar was stacked with glasses!

We're Heading Back to Blighty!

Chad has been doing an executive Master's degree which has him travelling for a week at at time to either Oxford or Paris.  I decided it wasn't fair for him to have all the fun, so I decided to 'join' him on his trip to Oxford.  I say 'join' because basically we are traveling from Canada to England together & the spending the entire week at separate places until we meet up again to fly home!  We left a LOT of snow behind at home, so I was looking forward to some warmer temperatures.

 It was really cool to see the ice on the water crossing from PEI to Nova Scotia

 We had a 6 hour layover in Halifax, so we enjoyed a leisurely dinner

 And we took a few selfies to pass the time!

 After flying all night, I traveled to Geoff & Margaret's & took it pretty easy for the afternoon.  I read a bit & got all caught up with what has been going on in their lives.

I managed to stay awake until dinner time & Margaret even had some splodge for me for dessert!

Sunday Pictures

Asher – 8.5 years

Chancery – 6.5 years

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Chancery: “Asher didn’t believe me this morning when I told him we were going to church.”

 

Asher: “Well, we haven’t gone the last 2 Sundays, so I just figured we wouldn’t be going today either!”

 

Chancery: “That was just because we had so much snow, but there’s only a little bit today, so we’re going to church.  Hooray!”

 

Chancery: “I bet Digby will miss us when we go!”

We Have a Long Way To Go

I took some pictures to commemorate the First Day of Spring!  Can you feel it?  The warmth of summer that’s just around the corner?  The feeling of sand between your toes as you read a book at the beach?  Nope, neither can I!

I put together a few before & afters.  Will we get from this to the nice green, need to mow your lawn stage by the end of June?

Snow

I don’t know what else to call this post.  I just decided to take pictures of the snow at it’s worst.

This is the side of our garage.  Under all that snow on the right side is my strawberry patch.  It will be interesting to see how my plants fared.  Hopefully we’ll have really big, juicy strawberries from all the extra moisture!

This is the front walkway

 

Peeking from behind all that snow is the top of our front door!

The view of the house across the street from the front door

 

The sidewalk to the back deck.  The tree that the kids climb in is just to the left of the path.  The snow is currently 6 feet up on the tree.

Where Are We?

You might be saying to yourself, “Sherilyn is normally so good about posting Sunday Pictures, but there were none yesterday.  Are they on a trip?”  Well, it is March Break, but we didn’t go anywhere, & even if we wanted to, there’d be no getting out now!

  We had another blizzard yesterday, & if I took Sunday pictures, you would have seen us playing Mario Kart & watching Star Wars.

 

Today it is still snowing & blowing, but PChad decided it was time to assess the snow drifts.

 

There’s a door just to the right of the wood pergola, but we couldn’t open it this morning!

 

This is our back deck, it had no snow at all on it yesterday morning…

 

Maybe we should take the snowflakes off the door, they seem to be attracting real snowflakes!

Sunday Pictures

Asher – 8.5 years

Chancery – 6.5 years

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Asher: “We’re trying to get a picture with all 3 of us looking.  It’s like when Mummy started taking Sunday Pictures of us, she could never get a good one of both of us looking & smiling!”

 

Chancery: “Look over there, Digby!  Look at Mummy!”

 

Asher: “No, don’t go to Mummy, look at Mummy!”

 

Asher: “Now you’re looking at me, just turn your head a little & look at Mummy!”

 

Chancery: “Not like that, silly dog!”

 

Asher: “Great job, Digby!”

Sunday Pictures

Asher – 8.5 years

Chancery – 6.5 years

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Chancery: “Here I sit, once again, waiting for Asher.”

 

Asher: “I was just trying to finish building my Lego car.”

 

Chancery: “I am glad you finally showed up, Asher.  I have a great idea.”

Chancery: “Shhh, here’s the plan…”

 

 Open your eyes, Chancery!

 

 No, Asher, open your eyes!

 

Chancery: “Wasn’t that funny, Asher?”

 

Asher: “Yes, Chancery, that was a pretty funny trick!”