Tis the Season

Want to wish all my friends and family far and near a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

ISE's get together...

Today all the ISE's who live here in England got together for a Thanksgiving feast. This is a great way for us to celebrate the Thanksgiving traditions with your typical turkey and pumpkin pie. Since this is an American holiday and not celebrated here our children still go to school and Steve still goes to work. I personally feel that they should give all Americans the day off no matter where in the world you are but that is not the case. Anyways we had such a fun time visiting with friends and the children had a blast running outside playing. There was so much food which reminds me of home when we celebrate! Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving for as we have so much to be thankful for. Also, good luck to all those black friday shoppers. My shopping buddies are greatly missed!! Love to all!!

I did it!!

My photography class is officially over!! I submitted my last assignment today and what a relief! I am so happy I took the class for it has given me more confidence about my photography and I learned so much! I still have a great deal to learn but isn't that with everything you do. I'm not sure where my path is taking me next but I do know that I love taking pictures and I am going to work on my style and creativity. I don't know what my grade is yet but I'll post it when I find out. Now one less thing to worry about!

Wellies on a rainy day...

A few days ago the kids woke up, got ready for school and said "Yes...its raining we get to wear our boots!" Here in England rain boots are called Wellies. I haven't bought them a pair until this year. I thought they didn't need them, its not like they go outside during recess to play in the rain. Wrong! They do go outside every now and then when it is wet or even slightly raining so I learned my lesson and bought them. Last year they needed them for not only the rainy days but for also the snowy wet days. Nobody that I know of wears snow boots here they only wear their wellies. You would think their feet would get really cold. The snow here doesn't stick around very long and they usually don't get much anyways. The kids had so much fun jumping in puddles and stomping about that it took us so long to walk from the car into school. Luckily all that got wet were the boots!

Venice trip 09

This is the video we took during our trip. Sorry it is a little long. I didn't take the time to edit it. At the beginning of the video you will see a man making things out of glass. He was making a glass horse. Venice is well known for all of their glass decorations and they have it everywhere to buy. Pretty expensive though. Enjoy!

Venice Trip

Last month we took a weekend trip to Venice!  Loved it!!  It is truly a beautiful city that is surrounded by water.  The kids enjoyed taking the water taxis to get to where we wanted to go. Below are some pictures from the trip.  I unfortunately don't have all the pictures I took because I accidently deleted them and can't get them back :(  Thankfully Bryce was taking a ton of pictures with his camera so most of them are taken from Bryce!  Thanks Bryce and by the way you did a great job!!  

                                     This is where a lot of the shopping was.
                                     Masks were very popular here and the boys had to get one!
                                             Our Gondola driver.





                                       Tyler loved their spaghetti...we all did.  It was amazing!
                                     The group of friends we went with.
                                       
                                      This is where the boats stop to fill up!
                                  This is our hotel we stayed at.  Fabulous hotel and we would recommend it                                     to anyone!  It was the Molino Stucky Hilton.  

Thank You!!

We owe a big thank you to all of our family and friends who made our visit to the states so wonderful!!  We know how busy everyone's life can be especially during the summer months but you all made time for us and made our visit very special.  Thank You!!

The kids started school this last week and they are truly loving it.  This is a huge change from starting school last year.  Everything was so new to us and I must say that this year seems to be so much easier since we actually know what we are suppose to be doing and where to go.  I have high hopes that this year is going to go much smoother than it did last year!

I will post pictures of the first day of school soon and I am going to try to post something new every week!

Father's Day video

Happy Father's Day! Have a great day!

Love You!!

Year One's Wedding

This last week Tyler's class performed a wedding ceremony. The year one students do this every year. This is a part of their religious education curriculum since this school is affiliated with the Church of England. Tyler played the role of an usher. The bride was Yi Xuen who is the daughter of another ISE family here. Yi Xuen's family will be moving back to Singapore in August and will be greatly missed!

I took pictures for this mock wedding for the school and here is a video I made that I wanted to share with everyone.

Bryce's 9th Birthday

June 15th was Bryce's Birthday!  Wow...can't believe he is 9 already.  The Sunday before his birthday he had a friend party at Laser Force.  This is a very fun place not only for kids but for the parents too.  You get split into teams and go into this dark area full of twist and turns where you try to shoot the other team with your laser gun.  Its a great game of laser tag!  On his birthday he had a great day at school with friends and then that evening we took him to his favorite pizza place, Pizza Express.  Then we came home, let him open his gifts and then had some of his favorite cake (angel food cake).  We had a great time!  Happy Birthday Bryce!!

Update

I know we haven't posted for awhile and I'll work on getting some new pictures and some stuff up. I am trying very hard to get a lot of ground covered in my photography class before we head home for the states. I am learning so much and can't wait to start applying all that I am learning to my photos. The kids have been busy with school. Tyler just went on a field trip to the park which he loved and Bryce just finished a poster project on facts about water. His poster was the biggest poster which is really funny because we thought, ok you have to make a poster board size poster which he did. All the other kids brought in a regular paper size poster. I guess we Americans always think BIG. Kylie is still busy playing with her toys, reading her books, and having fun with mom during the day. Steve has been very busy with work as usual.

Bryce is going to have a friend birthday party this Sunday at Laser Force! Its a great place for the kids to go and do laser tag! I will post some pictures and tell you all about it! We will be coming home in July. We can't wait. The kids have begun their countdown!

More posts soon to come!

Stonehenge

We had a great time visiting Stonehenge even though it is the middle of nowhere and all you see is this...a bunch of huge rocks.  Very neat to see in person and there is so much history involved.  After Stonehenge we went to the cutest town called Bath.  There is on Roman Bath there which we couldn't see because we got there too late, but we will go back.  We also went with some friends of ours who are also doing a Cat assignment overseas.  Below are some pictures from that day!

What should I do next?

Kylie dancing

Lately Kylie has been into putting on some type of outfit with a skirt and demanding she wear her fairy wings that grandma and grandpa bought her. She loves to dance! I guess she takes that after her mommy!! Dance lessons here we come!

Grandma and Grandpa Rolinitis Gave Us A Visit!!

A couple of weeks ago Steve's parents came to visit!  They were amazed with all the differences we have to face here.  They did a great job dealing with me driving on the wrong side of the road.  I don't think I scared them too much...maybe at times!  We took them to London for the weekend to see the sites and the rest of their visit was spent playing with the kids and seeing many sites around England.  We had such a wonderful time with them!  It was sad to send them back home but we will be seeing each other again very soon!