Pooh walks

Grandma Bucky, being a long time fan of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, was keen to go see all the sights here in the neighborhood which are part of the stories. (We also got a fabulous book from Aunt Heidi & Uncle John for Christmas which provided a "Natural History of Winnie-the-Pooh and the Ashdown Forest", but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here...)
We had a lovely day today and took a walk from Gill's Lap to see some of the highlights while the rest of our visitors were spending a full day in London.

After several days of blustery winds and heavy rains, it was Very Nice to see the sun!
G-Buck has a "fit bit" which is set to buzz when she reaches the targeted amount of movement for the day. She has been really great about making sure to get a good walk in until her bracelet buzzes.

The Gaggle of Ganses arrive!

Well, at long last our dear relations from Santa Barbara arrived. Collectively they are known as the gaggle of Ganses and we are so glad that they decided to come all this way to see us and spend the Christmas season with us! They arrived on Sunday night (20 Dec) after a few delays at Heathrow. Rhiannon and I met Grandma Bucky (aka G-Buck), Uncle Phil, Aunt Libby, and cousins Ruby and Molly at Gatwick airport where they rented a car and followed us back to Chalfonts.

We spent yesterday going for walks and runs (the Gaggle minus G-Buck is really into running), and taking short trips in the car just around the local area. It was actually a horrendous day weather-wise, with very blustery winds and beating rain, but the Gaggle didn't seem to mind! We took them to the Cat Center and then called in for drinks and crisps at the Red Lion.

Today we went to Hever Castle and then to a pantomime in East Grinstead.

It was a big job to get everyone out of the house with daylight enough to fit everything in, but we got there in the end!

Turns out that Uncle Phil and I have something else in common - our legs turn to concrete when we go into museums. Even though Hever Castle (childhood home of Anne Bolyn) was interesting, the pace of the rest of our party was just way too slow. I ended up hanging with Molly, Rhiannon and Tryfan and we pretty much raced through the inside part of the castle and then raced around the Maze outside and toured the other parts of the beautiful grounds.
Then we went to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in pantomime style. It was pretty entertaining, although it was a bit more polished than we were expecting / hoping for.

Grand finale of the panto

To end the day out, we called in at Den's Fish Bar in Forest Row for some fish and chips, which we took home and enjoyed in the comfort of Chalfonts!

Sparkly sticks

I saw some beautiful wintery sparkly festive branches for sale at the garden center, and of course thought to myself that I'm not going to pay good money for a bunch of sticks! Instead I bought some silver spray paint and then Rhiannon and I went for an expedition to find some suitable branches for painting.

 

Getting ready for Christmas!

After horse riding, this afternoon we headed over to Broadstone Warren to get a tree, then we started decorating this evening!

We've been looking so forward to Christmas season and it is an absolute joy to finally be able to have the Christmas music blasting and the decorations up. Our family visitors arrive next weekend! 

A riding lesson

Today Rhodri was away for the morning doing a big bike ride and Rhiannon has been begging for a horse riding lesson, so we decided to give it a go at Tremaine's riding stables.

Rhiannon is on the first horse, and Tryfan is 2 horses behind

Tryfan's horse breaking into a trot

They both came away really stoked.

Birthday Party and Tree Lighting

Today was Rhiannon's birthday and we had 12 girls over after school for a couple of hours of birthday partying.

Making Christmas baubles: Jemima, Savannah, Agnes, Sophie, Iris, Oriel, Sophie, Neve, Willow, Holly and Rhiannon

We laid out food to eat and gingerbread cookies to decorate on the breakfast bar and counter, and just let the girls potter around as they wanted while Rhodri and I kept a low profile in the background. Then we turned the music up and the lights down and had a dance party for a bit.

Then we turned the lights up and gathered round the table to sing Happy Birthday and cut up the pavlova cake. It was a tasty meringue and cream and fresh fruit cake that everyone was quite pleased with. We didn't even try to fit seats around the table so just let the girls sit wherever they wanted to for their cake eating.

After that, we mobilized shoes and coats and torches (flashlights), and all headed down the road for the Christmas tree lighting event at the village hall. Everyone was really pumped by then so were happily singing carols at the tops of their voices.

So then the Tree Lighting was an epic event in its own right! This was our 5th year going to it, and each year is so charming with warm heartfilled corny funniness and the strange and wonderful feeling one gets when large groups of people are all singing together. The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!

Warren was the MC (as usual), and a spokes person from a local charity gave a little talk about how they (the Children's Peanut Ward in East Grinstead hospital) had used the money raised from our Tree lighting event last year to buy an iPad for the kids to use to help keep their minds occupied during the unpleasant parts of their hospital stays. So sweet. Then the school sang a few songs and the Danehill Hand Bell Ringers performed a few songs while the audience hummed or sang along. The final performers were "John the Fish and his assistant Charlie Chuckles" who are local teenage boys with a comedic musical act. Charlie played the keyboard, sang and also played some alto sax while the Fish told festive jokes and sang. They also led the audience in the final carols and got everyone really pumped up on Christmas spirit. Charlie Chuckles playing keyboard and singing "Hallelujah" while the whole audience sang along with the chorus of hallelujah brought tears to my eyes with the intimacy and warmth of the room.

When the show was over and the lights came up, free mince pies and cider was served to everyone but I had to race off to a local Ladies Christmas dinner up at the Red Lion. Anyway, it was a great evening.

Rhiannon turns 10

Our precious girl reached double digits today. She had a good day with presents to open upon awakening first thing this morning, then a normal school day, then we went out for dinner to the Red Lion in the village.

At a full 10 years of age, Rhiannon...
- is incredibly observant and thoughtful
- loves being with and caring for young children
- has sparkly smiling eyes and beautiful golden hair
- is really good at writing and doing artwork
- is also really good at troubleshooting gadget problems and getting things working properly
- likes to wind up her brother
- knows how to work hard on something that she cares about
- is a great dancer and has a lovely singing voice
- loves riding horses
- is amazingly good at preparing for anything when we go somewhere, always bringing a water bottle, snacks, surprises, things to do, etc
- is genuinely sweet and absolutely wonderful

We are lucky to have her in our family!
When we went for dinner, we had a really chilled out relaxing meal by the fireplace down the stairs. It was all peaceful and well behaved, and then they started photo bombing and getting rowdy.

The Big Sing

Tonight was the annual East Sussex Big Sing, which is an event for a bunch of primary schools in East Sussex county. Only the older kids get to participate, so this was Rhiannon's first year singing along with 10 other schools. She and Sophie were the ones from their school who stood in the front, and Rhiannon is the one wearing white knee socks and a white shirt with grey skirt on the left side of the photo. It was such a cool experience for the kids to be able to perform in a massive theatre that seats several hundred people.

 After the Big Sing, we went out to dinner at Smith & Western in Tunbridge Wells. We loved it - country music and good burgers and ribs.

Ivan the Mole

We've had a mole problem in our back garden for the past few months, and so we have had to call in a professional to set traps for these guys who've been digging up our lawn. These traps were lain before I went to Iceland, and I'd been thinking about moles as I was learning new skills last month.

Fortunately today I met "the Mole Guy" just after he had retrieved the most beautiful mole from one of the traps. He handed the mole over to me and I named him Ivan.

He has the most amazing hands (palms facing outward, mid-dig, in the attached photo!) and when I applied my new skills I found that he had incredible back and arm muscles. I'll spare you the photos I took, but they were wonderful. Its too bad that moles live underground and the rest of us above ground never get to really know them until their digging days are over.

Thanksgiving in Sussex

We've never really done anything to properly celebrate Thanksgiving while living outside of the USA. It is my favorite holiday ever, but outside of the US it is just a normal but usually extra busy Thursday! This year, however, we organised a Thanksgiving Potluck for the Friday night (day after Thanksgiving) and invited a bunch of our friends over to our house. I didn't take any photos of that night actually, except for this funny turkey veggie platter that Rhiannon and I put together after seeing an inspirational photo my Mom sent.

So that was a fun evening and well worth the effort. Then on Sunday night we invited the Denslows over to dinner to thank them for all the dinners that they provided us the past year.

Anne Marie, Rhodri, Gordon, Joe, Tryfan (not visible), Sam, Rhiannon, and William

Beating and the gifts

Rhodri spent today "beating" on a hunt. This means he was one of the guys scaring the pheasants out of their hiding places in the woods and making them fly out into the open for a bunch of rich guys who paid to go on the hunt today. As part of the payment, he was given two ducks and two pheasants. We spent the following two evenings preparing the birds for eating.

Fun times in the Lewis house!

Birthday goodness

My birthday was yesterday and it was a day of nice surprises!

I got some lovely presents including this winter stealth camouflage lounge outfit. Here I am camouflaged against the polished pebble wall paint in the dining room.

We went for dinner at the Hatch pub nearby after swimming lessons. Always lovely to go out for food! Thanks family for making it special.

Riding horses in the hood

Today was an in-between sort of day, with Tryfan nursing an injured ankle so unable to go to rugby training this morning and Rhiannon restless to do something interesting. I was really tired after my stretch of days in Iceland (the time warp due to different light landscape, clocks permanently stuck at certain times, and then staying up through wee hours every night watching the aurora from the hot tub...), so didn't want to do much today.

Rhiannon suggested going horse riding, so she went to the trouble of phoning a nearby riding stable and reserving spots for the 3 of us on an afternoon ride. It was a bit of a rainy, sloppy muddy day, but the horses didn't mind.
Tryfan was lukewarm about going riding, but by the time we were all on our horses, he was nearly squealing with joy. Rhiannon rode Sparky, Tryfan rode the naughty little ___ and I rode Megula. Tryfan's horse didn't want Rhiannon's horse to go in front of him and kept trying to bite Rhiannon's horse! We rode around the farm and down through the woods on the edge of the farm - just the 3 of us plus a Guide. At the end we got to trot and that is when Tryfan really started squealing with joy and laughter. It was really fun and they've been begging to go again.

Iceland escape

On Friday evening after work, my friends Lou and Leigh joined me on a long weekend (ok, more like a week!) adventure in Iceland. We hatched the plan back in May when I remembered about the wonderful woman we met in Feb 2013 called Lene. I had been so fascinated by her skills as a tanner, so I asked her if she would be open to hosting a tanning workshop for novices. Its hard to put into words the enormity and other-worldliness of this time in Iceland, but let's just say it was very special.

Lou, Leigh and me

View of Hjalteyri from our house

Hot tub on the edge of the fjord at Hjalteyri

View towards Akureyri from our living room

I loved working with the fish skins

We worked with fish, sheep, and reindeer. The process was absolutely fascinating to me and I savored the time spent standing around a table working with our hands and having interesting conversations on all sorts of topics. Like I said, it was very special.

Lou, Leigh, Lisl and Lene

Halloween at Herstmonceux

Today was another gorgeous autumnal day so we packed a picnic and went to the Jubilee green while Rhods was out on his bike.

We relaxed a bit in the afternoon before the full evening of Halloween events kicked off!
This year for Halloween we did not go trick-or-treating, but we did watch the final match of the rugby World Cup (New Zealand vs Australia) while Rhiannon went to a birthday party, then we all went to the Herstmonceux observatory which is about 45 minutes away from us. I've been wanting to go here for awhile but tonight the big telescopes were available for an open evening AND for once we had clear skies!

Taken with my iPhone through the eyepiece of a small telescope

There were loads of science exhibits which could have taken our attention all night, but we pried ourselves away so that we could look into the amateur telescopes that were scattered around the lawn and also go into the BIG telescopes. The most impressive one was the Thompson 26-inch Refracting Telescope

Inside Dome E with the Thompson 26-inch Refracting Telescope which is 125 years old!
The floor moves up to the eyepiece for the telescope rather than the telescope moving. 

It was a beautiful night and also was so lovely to do something a bit different for Halloween and Grandma Debi's last night.

Autumnal times

It hasn't been that cold lately, and actually we have had some gorgeous autumnal days with that low golden light and leaves of all colors. We went for lunch today at the Gallipot in Hartfield and then the kids collected some beautiful leaves to start making craft projects.

Glyndebourne

Our favorite librarian Aven from Forest Row library told us that there is a really good opera on at Glyndebourne this week, so Rhodri and I took advantage of Mom's offer to babysit and we made an evening of it. The opera we saw was this: http://www.glyndebourne.com/tickets-and-whats-on/events/2015/mozarts-die-entfuehrung-aus-dem-serail/ and it was wonderful.

We had really good seats at only £29/ each overlooking the orchestra pit and quite close to the front.
Neither of us had ever been to this famous opera venue before and we were both really impressed. Thanks Mom for letting us go!

Hanging out with Grandma

We've been having a lovely time with Grandma Debi, and she even went out and bought us some board games to play during the dark and stormy days of autumn/ winter.

We won't be doing too much physical activity this half term though, since walking is not something that Mom is excited about and so prefers to sit around reading and playing games. It is very nice to have her here nonetheless.

The beginning of Christmas

Today we baked a Christmas cake using Rhodri's family's recipe. This is a cake that one must bake at least 6 weeks ahead of the intended serving event because one must then "feed" the cake over time. I've always been curious about this, so finally I got the recipe from Nain and we bought the ingredients and went to town!  Our idea is to bake this now, then when Grandma Bucky, Uncle Phil, Libby and kids come to town for Christmas, we can serve the cake and save some for them to take back to Mom/ Grandma Debi.

Here we are about to put the cake into the oven.

Grandma for a week or so

Grandma Debi arrived today to spend the October half term with us so she will have about 9 days here. This evening we all went to Tryfan's taekwondo grading event at 6pm, then we went out to dinner to La Casa in Nutley.  It was a great way to start the half term holiday!

Tryfan about to perform for Mr Simmons