Valentines Party

Last Saturday we had a Valentine's Party with a lot of the other Americans here and a wonderful English couple. My good friend Becki helped host the party. We spent many hours planning games, picking out decorations, and making delicious food to eat. Becki also spent a lot of time putting special touches to the champaign glasses, creating a playlist of love songs, and freezing a ton of ice cubes with limes and mint inside of them for our mojito punch. A couple of the games we played were do you know that love song, which couple could blow and pop 10 balloons the quickest, an apple balancing game, and the newlywed game. All I can say is that we had a blast and I think everyone who attended had a good time too. Kent (Becki's husband) and Steve did a great job organizing some of the games as well and they were also good sports for doing pretty much anything Becki and I asked them to do. We truly have some great guys!!

Everyone who attended brought a dish to share so needless to say we had so much food but it was all so good!! We also had everyone vote on who they felt was the best dressed couple since we had a dress code for the party. Everyone must wear either red, white, or pink. The couple who won received a chocolate bottle of champaign. We had such a great time planning this party and also had a wonderful time with everyone who attended. I think it was a big hit!!

Yummy giant cup cakes we made!
Becki and I



Gift bags for our guests full of American sweets!!

Mojito punch
Champaign glasses
Newlywed Game

Best Dressed Couple
Apple Balancing Game



Kent instructing his game (Balloon pop)

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.