Last day in the sun

The week of loveliness had to come to an end eventually, but we did make the most of our final hours. After sailing, we also did some kayaking and snorkeling. Here are Rhods and I with the hotel in the background.

Eric and I after snorkeling together

We also had a professional photographer do a session with our family. This was right before going to dinner at the semi-fancy restaurant in the hotel so we were all in our dinner outfits.

On Saturday afternoon, our family started to peel off to head to the airport. Our flight back to Gatwick wasn't until 8:45 pm so we had the whole day to hang around the hotel. No problem! Just a bit more swimming and relaxing. 

 And then just before getting in the taxi to the airport, Rhiannon and I had a bitey-fish spa pedicure. I don't think either of us will be having one of those again any time soon! It was so tickley and at times pinchy. But we had a good time laughing together through it all.

 Eventually we got to the airport, had burritos for dinner, did a bit of poking around the shops, and then got on the plane and slept most of the way back to Gatwick. Adios, Mexico. Hope to come back again sometime...

We are now sailors

Rhodri, Will and I took a 30 minute sailing lesson on a little Hobie cat, and then we were turned loose in the wide ocean! Our Lewis family of 4 took the boot out for an hour straight after that, and then the next day we rented 3 Hobie cats and each one of us skippered a boat loaded with family members! Grandma Debi and Grandma Bucky politely declined, so it was just the 16 of us out there distributed amongst the 3 sailboats, but this ended up being one of our favorite memories of the entire trip.

Our little flotilla chased each other around and some of us even jumped overboard for a quick swim before climbing back up. Some of the small kids fell asleep while we were cruising around and the rest of us just enjoyed the hour of fun. It was a little tricky getting back to the landing spot. Rhodri ended up kayaking out to give me some moral support, but we got there in the end. The only bummer was that we didn't bring a camera to capture the glorious colors and smiles of the event but hopefully these are seared onto all of our memories. It was super fun. The fact that there was a guy with a jet ski on the shore standing by in case we got into trouble was reassuring too!

Christmas bliss in Mexico

We had such a wonderful week at the Royal Haciendas.
There were 18 of us - 10 adults and 8 kids - and although we didn't have adjacent rooms (kind of a sore point), we were able to coordinate pretty effectively throughout the week so that we could maximize our time together and make the most out of this amazing opportunity! We spent a lot of time in and around the pools, especially in the mornings and throughout the lunching hour(s). The water was warm, the air was warm, the sea was warm, the sun was shining and we normally had a bit (or more) of a breeze.  It was absolute bliss!

 The actual Christmas event turned out to be a themed buffet dinner on Christmas Eve, i.e. the first full day we were there. The Palapa restaurant had a live musician who sang and played the sax and piano.  And Grandma Bucky got to ride in an ice sleigh!

When Phoebe and Rhodri finally got to dance together to the crooner performing "Feliz Navidad", sweet Phoebe was mesmerized and literally stood gawping and frozen while Mr Crooner sang directly to her. It was so funny to watch. So that was Christmas Eve, and then the next morning on Christmas Day, all 18 of us piled into our suite to open stockings and then do a white elephant gift exchange. We ordered breakfast burritos, pancakes, coffee and juice for everyone to be delivered to the room! Here is a little video of the scene:

 We got all the cousins to pose together in the balcony hot tub and then we headed down to play in the pool.

Luke, Phoebe, Billy, Ingrid, Rhiannon, Tryfan, Evan and Jordan

Each morning after that, we would meet for breakfast at the Palapa buffet restaurant which was right on the beach. We'd take over a big long table or a few tables and various members of the family would come and go between 7:00 am and 9:30 am. One morning our two went down by themselves when they woke up early and hungry! Normally Grandma Debi would go down with them since we were all staying in one suite.

After breakfast we would head to the beach or the pool and set up camp for the day, at least until lunchtime after which was nap time for 6 of the 8 kids (i.e. not our two!). We went kayaking, snorkeling, walking/ shell collecting, running, and general swimming in the gorgeous sea water during the first several days. Some of us preferred to stay by the pool reading books in the shade, doing aqua aerobics, and generally playing in the water. We all worked really hard to make sure that nobody got sun burnt, so that was good.

The whole week was a blur of wonderfulness, although everyone had "their moments" at some point along the way. We are family, after all!

Mexico, here we come!

Today we left for a week with my family in the Riviera Maya south of Cancun. Direct flights from Gatwick to Cancun - woohoo!

It was a 10.5 hour flight, and both kids were buzzing with excitement the whole time... "just 8 hours to go, Mama!" We watched 'Elf' together and a few other movies and the hours went by. Rhods sat across the aisle and did his own thing. Soon enough we had landed, gone through immigration, gathered our bags, and met our driver who took us to the Royal Haciendas resort which is ~45 minutes drive south of the airport.
We checked in and located our suite, where Grandma had already set up camp. We had very happy reunions with her and with Eric, Will, Kristin, Rebecca, and Heidi who came in turn to visit us down at the pool cafe where we had a late dinner and some celebratory margaritas!

Farewell to good friends

We've become good friends with a Danish family that have been living here for the past 3 years. Casper is in Tryfan's class, and both parents Ole and Bettina had become friends of ours. We knew that they wouldn't be here forever, but we couldn't quite believe it when the day came that they had to actually move back to Denmark.

We went to their leaving do at the Coach & Horses pub (Ole's favorite place) last night, and then Casper came by today before we left for Mexico. We have vowed to come visit them in 2018. We sure will miss them.

I'll never forget Casper's smiling face back when he first arrived (when Tryfan and Casper were in Year 2) and came to Forest School. He didn't know a word of English except for his name, but he had the greatest smile and such a sweet demeanor. Hope these two will stay friends over the years.

Henna party

Rhiannon had a 2nd birthday party this year with all of her friends from her new school. She wanted to hire a private henna tattoo artist to come over, so that is what we did. It was actually a really nice, easy going party and we really enjoyed meeting her new friends.

 

This was also the last day of the term for Rhiannon's school, so that is why she wanted to do henna tattoos now - they will wear off in 2 weeks time, just enough for the Christmas and New Year holidays to pass.

Girlfriends from the hood

Rhiannon had her birthday party tonight after a full day of working at the Christmas Fair. It was a small gathering with just the 4 other girls from her year at primary school. They never get to see each other altogether, so it was a bit special to have them together at once. In fact, we invited the parents to linger for a bit after dropping them here so that we could catch up a bit with them too.

 In fact, their teacher even called by to see them all for a bit. Since it was Mrs GJ's first year at this school last year, this particular group of girls occupies a piece of her heart. They were all so happy to see her again and tell her all about their new schools.

They watched a movie and then went up to bed, though not to sleep until after 11pm. Then poor Aggie work up retching and had to go home early this morning. The rest of them had a leisurely morning and we had a quiet day after they all went home.

The best night of the year

Tonight was the annual Chelwood Gate Christmas Tree Party at the village hall.
This was our 8th consecutive year attending the event, and it was probably the best one yet.
There are some aspects which are the same every year: it always starts just after 6pm on the 2nd Friday of December, and every year this particular day happens to be an extra busy, stressful, frantic day with a mad rush to get everyone fed and out the door in time to walk down to the hall. This means that every year, both Rhodri and I (and most other parents who make it) are grumpy and stressed and fed up already with the whole thing.
But then a little bit of actual Christmas magic happens.

Once everyone had squeezed into the hall - kids in the front, several rows of chairs for elderly and other lucky ones who managed to get a seat, and then the majority of the crowd standing in the back - the MC welcomed us all and then invited everyone to get up and go back outside to gather round the huge Christmas tree that had been set up. Kids bolted for the door and immediately recommenced their chasing games, adults reluctantly clustered in groups of 2 or 3, and many people refused to go back outside anyway (it was 2 deg C, so quite cold). It was pretty dark out there with only the single emergency light on the side of the hall, but the MC started the crowd off by singing "O Christmas Tree" with the words conveniently printed in the event handouts. The first run through was pretty weak, so we had another go with encouragement to sing as loud as we could in order to get the tree to show her lights. So we all shouted/ sang "O Christmas Tree" a second time and the lights came on. Cheers all around, and we were ushered back into the hall to continue the program.

The program consisted of the "National Headache Society" (i.e. Danehill Primary school choir & orchestra) performing a few numbers including "Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow wow" and "Eye of the Tiger", then a few jokes from Mr Fish the MC, the annual performance by the Danehill Handbell Ringers, a teenage boy "Dan" playing a couple of songs on the piano, and then a little intermission to refill drinks and have mince pies. The final half of the program included a sort of creepy edition of "The music of the night" from Phantom of the opera and then a couple of duets by Charlie Chuckles & Zoe and some final jokes from Mr Fish. The whole event was over around 8:30 pm and everyone pitched in to put the chairs back into the storage room and tidy up the hall. But the whole evening was just so endearing and funny and sweet.

The only thing about tonight was that it marked the first year that we did not have Rhiannon's birthday party in the afternoon hours previous to the event.  That used to be such a lovely way to kick off the Christmas season, but this year she wanted to have her party on Saturday night.

India!

I've just come back from a week in Pune, India! This was a business trip which was rather impromptu. I left early Sunday morning after Tryfan's rugby thing the night before.  Since I need a visa to travel to India and a lot of logistics had to be arranged, I wasn't sure at all that this was going to happen until the last minute. But it all went to plan and was actually a really great week. I got to reunite with my old friend Anand who I used to work with in Gatwick but he moved to Pune a couple of years ago.

I traveled with my colleague Suha and her husband. We were on the same flight from Abu Dhabi to Pune, and India was new to all of us. That made it fun to share the experience of traveling by taxi on the roads. We had some really exciting car journeys between the hotel and the office! Despite huge trucks, cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, bicycles and walkers all sharing the same space, with apparently no rules (e.g., one way street signs don't actually seem to mean anything), we didn't see any crashes. People go fairly slow and use a lot of hand gesturing and eye contact, but each journey was a thrill.

  

 On the stretch between the mental asylum and the prison which are near the office, there is a row of crazy banyan trees. I've never seen anything like them - they are creepy and viney, but magnificent in their size and intricacy. Apparently Pune is famous for these particular specimens. In fact, Pune is surprisingly lush and green (though also extremely polluted).

 The work itself involved a small team of us - 5 from our company and 3 from another company and we were doing a workshop together in person since it would have been too hard to work remotely. It was really great to meet my colleagues in person after spending over a year working closely with them by phone, instant message and email. Here are Fayas, Nisha, me and Suha (Richard was missing from this photo).
Anyway, now I'm safely back home and its Saturday afternoon. And its December! Time for mince pies and brandy cream... yay!