Trip to Cardiff

 We left on Boxing Day morning to go visit Sioned, JJ and kids, and then onto Nia, Cris and kids, all in Cardiff area.  Really glad that we were able to make this happen, so that Rhiannon could see the family and they could see her!

 

It was a quick trip, but a great one.  Then we headed back on 28th so that Rhiannon could meet up with her friends at home before flying back to California on New Years Day.

Christmas 2025!

We had the most scrumptious lovely Christmas day of just us 5 (including Annie dog) in the house enjoying the leisurely morning start with stockings, then coffee and some toast, then opening presents one at a time, taking a break for breakfast, lounging around in our jammies with Christmas music on.  It was absolutely divine and filled my heart with so much love and gratitude.

Good thing we had some kind of time horizon to work towards in the day, and that was the annual Christmas drinks at the Coach & Horses between 12-2 pm.  We walked down with Duane and Sara, and it was chilly, clear day, which was absolutely perfect for sauntering through the village to the pub.

The afternoon and evening were us back into our cozy clothes, making dinner and then playing the card game "Taskmaster", which was so hilariously fun and memorable. Thanks to Rhiannon for giving us that as a present!

 

The "tasks" we had to do included: get yourself into as small of a shape as possible, get as cold as you can in 60 seconds (coldest person wins), turn yourself into a video game character, and many more! We laughed so much. It was a brilliant day!

The day and night before Christmas

We've had some good quality time together, which has come to mean (nearly by definition) a lack of photographic evidence.  But trust me, its been amazing and wonderful.

Here are a few photos of delight and love...

 

On Christmas Eve during the day, we went into Brighton to go shopping (rather than Royal Tunbridge Wells as is our normal tradition).  We had a few chilly but productive hours on the streets of Brighton, then we all took the bus to Eva's Mom's house where we called in for afternoon tea and hang out. Didn't manage to get any photos of that lovely visit unfortunately...

Then later in the evening, we went down to the Coach & Horses for a Christmas carol singalong. It was so heartfelt and lovely, with a nice crowd (few more people than when i took the photo below).

We had a truly wonderful few days in the run up to Christmas and I'm so grateful.

Glitz and Spritz Christmas Party

We put on a Christmas party tonight and it was so fun.  In fact, we don't have too many photos from the event, it was that fun!  But here are some.

I think there were about 60 people here? But we had a few different hang out areas outside, inside and in the pod where the bar was.  It was really fun preparing for the party and also getting to see loads of friends and neighbors.  Such a brilliant night!

Our girl is finally home!!

Today was the day we've all been waiting for, when Rhiannon finally comes home for Christmas.  I volunteered to go collect her from Heathrow and so I got dressed up into my elf outfit... she wasn't impressed unfortunately, but hopefully she'll forget about it someday! Ha. I would post a photo that i took of us walking to the car park in the glass flyover bridge, but I don't want to get in more trouble so you can just imagine the scene instead.  Anyway, the main thing is that she is home for 2 weeks now - hurray!  It feels so good to have our family complete again.

Reuniting with Winnie

It has been so, so long since we've seen Winnie.  But I reached out to her on a whim last week and we ended up meeting for lunch in East Grinstead today.  Seeing her made me feel so happy :-)

Our Christmas wreath this year

I saw this thing on Instagram about making a wreath out of a potato so I did that and here it is!  I love the 3-dimensionality of it.  I think I'll do this every year from now on - such fun!

Carolling evening at the B's house

 Tonight was the annual Christmas carol singing at Emma B's house.  The 3 of us attended, although Tryfan was attending as one of the staff keeping people's glasses topped up and walking around serving food throughout the evening.  Even though it was a Sunday night with school tomorrow for Tryfs, we ended up staying quite late. It was a fun night though!

Rhi gets a visitor

Rhiannon's friend Dani came to visit her in SB this week for her birthday and she shared a couple of photos...

Fraggle and meatballs

Our friend Gary was telling me about meatballs today after we went together to our mutual friend Fraggle's birthday party in Brighton this afternoon.  Cat, Gary and I did the early shift at Fraggle's afternoon do in "the Cave".  Too bad it was actually a gorgeous and extremely rare sunny Saturday and there we were inside in a dark room. Nevermind. It was for a good cause.  Here are Cat, Fraggle (her real name is Anna) and me.

Since we had parked at haywards heath station to get the train to/ from Brighton, we then stopped at Waitrose to buy ingredients for making these delightful clumps of protein, and then Gary and I send photos to each other throughout the cooking period from our respective abodes.  Here is the final product with suspicious yet happy recipients of the meal.

Chelwood Gate Tree Lighting

This evening was my favorite event of the year, that which is the famous village tree lighting evening!  Rhods was the MC and I was the program organiser, and it was a grand success... for the most part!  The part that wasn't such a success was the grand finale to the evening before turning on the actual tree lights (which we did from inside the hall this year since it was wretched weather outside), and it was an attempt to teach the audience to sing a song "In Praise of Trees".  I had roped in Rhodri, Tryfan, Eva, and also Emma B and Charly, and it just didn't go very well at all.  The main thing was that it went.  We did laugh about it afterwards, but it was soooo cringey!  

I raise my arms in the forest, and sing a simple praise of trees //

I raise my arms and join in praise of trees //

The forest! The forest! I raise my arms in prase of trees //

And sadly, we didn't get to do any carolling this year either due to the weather. Bummer!

Day 1 of new chapter

It was quite fortuitous that I had booked a separate event to participate in on this day, which is my first day past my previous company.  As part of the Fuellers, I attended an all day Energy Conference at Mansion House, which is where the Mayor of London lives.  I met many people who are affiliated with the energy sector, so it was a great networking event. 

I even got to meet Prince Edward, who was a guest speaker at the event and was mingling afterwards where I got to exchange niceties with him.  Quite a thrill!

Last day with big blue

Today was a big day, because finally I could reveal to my co-workers that it was my last day of employment with the company. I was pretty emotional, and with many different emotions: happiness, relief, excitement, giddiness, numbness, and also sadness. I was sad because I wasn't allowed to (for some reason which nobody could really explain in adequate detail or terms) plan my departure or let anyone know before my final day had arrived.  That was painful to live through, but at the same time I can also admit now (about 4 months later as I write in early April 2026 and prepare to backdate this post) that I had been really struggling to maintain a positive attitude (which is very unlike me) and it did feel like things were coming to a head.  So what I mostly felt was immense relief, as though a massive heavy burden had been taken off my shoulders.  

Anyway, here is a photo of me with my two coworkers, A and J.

And now what? I will give myself the month of December off to enjoy the run up to Christmas, and then in January 2026 I will start working on figuring out what my next incarnation will be!

Thanksgiving in the village

I landed back at Heathrow on Saturday morning and made my way back home in time to rest and then get ready for the Lawrence's Thanksgiving Party at the village hall.  They definitely take things to another level!

The only casualty of the evening was when we were clearing things up and Sara tripped in the darkness, broke her glasses and got scraped up!  No permanent damage, but it was sad that of all people, she was the one to get a bit banged up.

Back to reality

Right, the party is over and now its time to head back to England.  Its fine, I'm fine with it. I'm just bursting with happiness and love for my family, and for the universe's gift to me that I got to go home for this precious stretch of time.

I started my final day with a run around the canyon in the early morning colors.  It was warm and glorious.

And all too soon I had to say goodbye to my loved ones and get on the plane

Meanwhile, it was also a special day because new puppy Rocky arrived into Eric & Kristin's life!

Goodbye California... for now... I did love that we flew right over Tecolote Canyon, with all the familiar landscape wrinkles and cliffy faces.  So beautiful in the sunset light.