Toga party!

We went to the Toga Party at the village hall for New Years Eve last night and it was hilarious! What a fun way to kick off the year!

 

Cristian had kindly made me some cardboard shoes which I wore to the hall, but with the road being wet and all... they didn't last too long! They flew off in a dramatic fashion as I was dancing.

Pre-party at our house

 

The kids all peaked around 10pm, which made the final 2 hours interesting. Several kids, including Valentin, were asleep on the red chairs the lined the periphery of the dance floor. The facial expressions on Tryfan and Toby (neighbor sitting next to Val) kind of say it all...

Rather tired and grumpy kids around 11pm

It was a really fun night, though! 

Venturing out of our postcode

We met up with our long, long lost friends Ginge and Pascale today!
We hadn't seen them in 7 years and so much has happened during that period. They last came to visit us in Norway when Tryfan was 3 months old and Pascale had just found out that she was pregnant. Now they have 2 gorgeous boys who we had never met before, so it was extra wonderful to get to meet them.

We went to Alice Holt forest and had a good play and run around outside for a couple of hours, then reconvened at a nearby Pub for a nice big lunch.

Eleanor, Arden, Olivia, Rhiannon, Carrig and Tryfan

Wild children at the pub

Everyone was giving us a hard time for being such homebodies, joking about rarely leaving our postcode. So it was nice to get out and explore a bit though!

Visitors from London for the day

Our long lost friends Neel and Reshma, and their 2 lovely children Zara and Cian came over to visit today. It was actually quite a massive effort to tidy the house to be somewhat presentable for visitors, but worth the effort! We had a big lunch, then went for a walk to the forest across the road. There were so many puddles which had turned to ice, and the kids had a grand time breaking out pieces of ice to carry around or else smashing the icy puddles by stomping.

Zara and Rhiannon stomping ice

 Tryfan and Cian were fast friends, but Zara was quite shy to start with. Smashing ice seemed to help the bonding between the girls! It was absolutely gorgeous light and such a pleasure to be outside in the cold clear air.

 After coming back inside, Zara and Rhiannon got their laptops out and exchanged email addresses, then showed each other various games and tricks they knew on their respective computers.

It was a lovely day that even included a game of Family Trivial Pursuit - Auntie Sions gave us this game which has a stack of cards for children and a separate stack for adults so everyone can play together. Its really fun! We were so glad that Neel and Resh could make the time to come out and see us.

PS. Yes, Rhiannon got a laptop for Christmas from us, which we consider to be quite a big step! She is extremely happy about this gift though!

A new way to the farm

We went on a wet and windy walk today with Cat.
She has recently moved her office premises to be at a farm nearby but hadn't figured out how to get there by walking. We busted out a map and used it as an excuse to explore (not that one ever really needs an excuse to explore).

Even in the brown-grey and leafless terrain, it is still a beautiful area to walk around in. Pretty horses and lush fields help too.

Christmas Day

Hurray for Santa! He came to our house (though we don't know how he got in since we pulled down the chimney and the woodstove isn't hooked up yet) and filled the stockings that were nailed to a piece of wood hanging from the dining table. He also left a couple of pressies for the kids. Rhiannon got a "Silver Cross Surf Jr 3-in-1" stroller/ pram for her baby dolls, and Tryfan got a Skylander carrier bag with 13 Skylander Giants inside. He really wanted the Skylander Trap Team figures and luckily some of aunties and uncles sent those dudes for him. He was really stoked.

Monica knitted some Olaf mittens for these guys

 We opened the presents and had a lovely relaxing morning of sprawling out across the living room floor on the pink carpet (which is temporary while we wait to have the floor finished).

Playing with new presents late Christmas morn

 It was the most gorgeous clear, cold day and we got dressed up to go for a nice walk near Airman's Grave.

Airman's Grave

 We went in search of a waterfall (not the same one we visited with Oscar and Sophie yesterday thought) and eventually found it.

We got to speak via Skype/ FaceTime with both of our families and had a lovely Christmas dinner all by ourselves. What a wonderful way to spend this special day.

Christmas Eve!

All very exciting in the run up to Christmas! I love this time of year and although it is so, so busy, I just love the feeling of the holiday period.
Today our friends Emma, Sophie and Oscar came over and we went for a really lovely scamper in the forest over the road, mostly exploring around the waterfall at the Vachary.

Tryfan, Oscar, Rhiannon and Sophie

Tonight we had a few options but decided to go to Tablehurst Farm in Forest Row, where there is a special Christmas Eve "Caroling to the Cows" service! Apparently this has been going for about the past 10 years, but it was the first that we had heard of it so we had to give it a go.
It was the most gorgeous, clear, cold evening with a very bright crescent moon (and the dark side illuminated as well) and a starry sky. Perfect for walking around a muddy farm singing to the animals! We started by singing to some adult pigs, then after a few songs we followed the farmer round to the beehives and sang a couple to the bees, then on to the young cows, then the adult cows, then some pregnant cows, and finally the sheep.

The caroling scene at the adult cows pen

Some adult "Sussex Brown" cows

The Farmer with the young cows

Tryfan in front of the sheep barn, where the evening wrapped up

 The final stop with the sheep was a covered barn with plenty of haybales to sit on and even a hay pyramid for kids to climb around on!

But the Farmer did tell the kids off for being too noisy and threatened to forbid them being on the pyramid if they couldn't be quiet! They quickly quietened down and we all listened to the Farmer tell a story about how the animals came down from heaven to be gifts to mankind. We finished by singing Silent Night and then the Farmer served mince pies and warm cider to everyone (for free). It was a lovely night and felt like a good way to spend Christmas Eve.
Before going to bed, Rhiannon and Tryfan set out this plate for Santa:

Rhiannon put the labels on...
"Here's a mince pie for Santa (there is brandy cream and amaretto in the fridge).",
"Lichen for the reindeer." [Note: Lichen helps make reindeer fly and this is what we were collecting in the forest today.],
"Candy canes for the elves for all there hard work."

The Outside Chance

This morning we got up and got straight into the car so we could drive 2+ hrs and meet Auntie Sions for lunch at a pub that is part-way between both our houses.

Sioned is off to spend 3 months in Uganda starting just after Christmas, so we won't see her for awhile! But we are excited about her upcoming adventures. She has set up this blog site and we plan to keep track of her here: http://sionedslittlestories.blogspot.co.uk/

Outside the Outside Chance pub

We had a lovely Sunday roast dinner (lunch) and then went to the park behind the pub to get some wiggles out before driving back home. Bentley came with us too so he was ready to run in the grass as well.

Plans change...

We had a plan for today, which was for all 4 of us to take a bus to Twickenham stadium in the morning and then spend ALL DAY there watching Tryfan play rugby and then watching some professional teams play. You can imagine the excitement in anticipation of this day....

However, Rhodri felt poorly last night and still in the morning today, so sadly (or not...!) we canceled our plans for today and Tryfan joined another family for a day of traveling and rugby while Rhodri stayed in bed and Rhiannon and I found other things to do!

We pottered around the house getting ready for Christmas, and then we went to a Panto performance of "Dick Whittington", which is a famous English story about a poor boy who travels around and eventually becomes Mayor of London. This was being held at the Danehill village hall, so it was just down the road from us and not terribly expensive to attend either.

In England, a pantomime is not a person with a white face who moves his hands but doesn't speak, it is a whole genre of musical performance live theatre which the audience is expected to participate in! Apparently all British children grow up having attended "pantos" during the Christmas holiday season, so my friends and neighbors were shocked to hear that I had never been to one. All the kids sat on beanbags and blankets in the front, and adults were seated on normal chairs. During the first half, Rhiannon sat up front with the rest of the neighborhood kids and I sat in the back, but after the intermission I moved up to the front with Rhiannon and she sat on my lap.

The whole thing was really, really good and very funny. Most of the male roles were played by females and vice versa, and there is always a villain in every panto that the audience needs to boo and hiss at.
In other news, Tryfan had a fantastic day at Twickenham and got to be coached a bit from some of the Harlequins players before the big game started, where Harlequins beat Newcastle 15-7 in a surprise victory. Tryfan and his teammates got to be "Guards of Honor" when the team came out onto the pitch before the start of the game. Really cool! But by the time Tryfan got home, he was very, very tired.

Finally time for Christmas!

Finally we are able to start readying our house for Christmas!
This afternoon we nipped over to Broadstone Warren (where Tryfan had his Beavers sleepover some months ago) and bought one of their trees so that the proceeds would go to support the Scouts. We weren't too fussy about which tree we got so within just a few minutes we were gone again.

I took Bentley for a late afternoon walk (~3:30pm) and the sunset was beautiful from up on top of the forest near the bear pit. Chilly, though.

When I got back from the walk, the tree was up and the decorations were making their way out of the big box and onto the tree.

We are soooo excited to be able to start celebrating Christmas!

Goodbye, Miss Copp

Today we had to say goodbye to our favorite teacher Miss Copp.

She was Rhiannon's Year 2 teacher and has been Tryfan's teacher for both Year 1 and the first part of Year 2. Sadly, she has decided that the teaching profession in the UK requires too much lame paperwork and she is changing careers. We found out about this decision back in October, but today was the day that we had to finally say goodbye. There were lots of tears at the church as the school performed the annual Christingle service ahead of the Christmas holiday.

We put together a keepsake book for Miss Copp, which included about 45 children's individual pieces of art that they made especially to help remind her of her good times at Danehill School. The below photo was taken at our last Forest School session with her a couple of weeks ago*.  We are going to miss her very, very much.

Miss Copp in the center of the photo with Tryfan just to the left (her right)

 * There is a privacy policy with regards to photos being published outside of the school, but hopefully this is ok because there are no names associated with any of the faces except for Miss Copp and Tryfan.

Windows and doors

Finally the windows and doors have all arrived and been installed. This was a bit of a saga because the front door was actually "lost" for about a week and then when it was finally "found" by the company we ordered the door from, it turns out that the door had never been made to begin with so somebody somewhere in Sweden was busy manufacturing our front door in a great hurry.

French doors and the preparation for a woodburning stove have replaced the windows

Before with chimney

After with a breakfast bar

From the kitchen, one can see the bumps of the South Downs in the distance (not visible here)

Next we had Lee Minter (the plasterer) come back and patch up around the new doors, which made a royal mess of the place again.

Finally Wayne returned some days later with the newly built and quickly delivered new front door.

We still have quite a bit left to do before Chalfonts is "finished"... sand off the dried plaster in the lounge and then paint the ceiling and walls, sand and then polyurethane (or something) the new wood floor, tile the front entryway and the other bathroom, carpet the rest of the downstairs and also the stairs, and then I don't even know what next. 

The red wall

We decided to make the wall next to the staircase a "feature wall" and agreed we should try a color called "Roasted Red". We figured we could always paint over it if we didn't like the color. As it turns out, we do quite like our new red wall.

Several people who have come by and seen our new feature wall have asked if we also go a new staircase because this wall has really brought the staircase to life!